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BIBLE YIE¥S 



OF 



CREATION. 




MOORE. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
Shelf .„*.t4„Gp 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



BIBLE VIEWS OF CREATION. 



BIBLE VIEWS 



OF 



CREATION 



# 



REV. GEORGE R. MOORE 



NOV 

Philadelphia 

JOHN McGILL WHITE AND COMPANY 

1328 Chestnut Street. 



y 



Y^ 



Copyrighted i8g$ 

BY GEORGE R. MOORE 

All Rights Reserved. 



TO BIBLE STUDENTS. 



To Bible Students the following pages 
are respectfully dedicated. 

G. R. M. 



^rTOnro * s ^ e rea( ^ n g aright the reve- 
-^ lations of God in nature and 

the Bible. 

Nothing is scientific that is out of har- 
mony with any truth from any source. 

" Consider the lillies of the field."— Matt. 

6:28. 

" And this is life eternal, that they 
might know thee the only true God, and 
Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent."— 
John, 17:3. 



Bible Yiews of Creation, 

" In the beginning God created the heaven 
and the earth." — Gen. i : i. 

" By the word of the Lord were the heav- 
ens made, and all the host of them by the 
breath of his mouth." — Ps. xxxiii : 6. 

" Through faith we understand that the 
worlds were framed by the word of God, so 
that things which are seen were not made of 
things which do appear." — Heb. xi : 3. 

The Bible does not make the mistake of 
alluding to our world as of a separate crea- 
tion from the other parts of the universe. It 
presents the universe as the creation of God 
in unity, and then the earth for our special 
consideration. 

Having said that the heaven and the earth 
was the creation of God "at the begin- 
ning," the next iu formation given us relates 
to the earth's substance as it was then 



8 Bible Views of Creation. 

known to have been before any change or 
transformations were set in motion within 
it (that created substance), so as to make it 
discoverable as a visible world. In its first 
stage of being, and prior to its second stage 
of being, " it was without form and void." 

"All visible nature is a multifarious asso- 
ciation of very compound substances, of 
which the particles must have been in some 
other state before they were compounded 
together. The simple condition of the ele- 
ments must have preceded their union in the 
compound, and thus it is physically impos- 
sible that a compound can have been eternal. 
Composition and eternity are as incompat- 
ible as to be and not to be." — Turner. 

It is equally clear that the elements thus 
spoken of were not visible prior to their be- 
ing compounded, and hence that all visible 
things are of a later formation than the in- 
visible, and " that the things that are seen 
were not made of things that do appear.' '— 
Heb. xi : 3. 



"And the earth was without form, and 
void." 

—Genesis, 1:2. 



SEEN AND UNSEEN. 

CHAPTER I. 
I see here a blade of grass. I am curious 
to kuow what it is aud how it came here. 
Whether it is simple or compound. What 
are the elements in it ? How did it become 
a blade of grass ? I see that it is a material 
thing. What I see and feel are certainly 
matter, but where did it come from ? And 
what was the shape of this matter when it 
was being worked up into this blade of grass ? 

Not seen here three days ago, and now 
such a clean, tiny thing it is ! I look another 
day, and lo ! my blade of grass is twenty 
times as high as it was when I saw it before, 
and I say : " How fast it grows.' ' What is 
it to grow ? It has twenty times as much 
matter in it now as it had before. 

I cannot see one atom of this matter as it 



12 Seen and Unseen. 

is taking its place in this spear of grass and 
causing it to grow. These materials are in 
some way being invisibly placed where we 
now see them. The matter itself could not 
be seen until it became grass. As a seen 
thing this grass has come from things un- 
seen. 

I look upon the carpet in my room and 
think of the wool in it as it was once seen 
growing on a sheep's back in the pasture. 
Our spear of grass may have helped this 
wool-making, but not until it was eaten up 
by the sheep and thoroughly digested and 
well circulated in the animal's fluids, and 
then by some invisible selections of the in- 
visible atoms required to make the wool 
grow, it came out upon the surface of the 
sheep's body as a seen thing from atoms 
that a little time before were unseen. 

I notice the paper upon which I am writ- 
ing. What is it? It is fibrous material, 
wrought out in some way into these thin, 
smooth sheets of paper. Fiber is always a 
product of some living thing that grows ; it 



Seen and Unseen. 13 

may have come from the cotton plant, or it 
may be of wood growth, or flax, or of some 
other growth of fiber made by a vegetable 
or animal life in some past time and in some 
other form than it now presents to us. As a 
seen thing all of its material atoms have 
once or more passed through a state of 
growing in which they were unseen. 

I look upon the table I am using to write 
upon. Most of it is made of wood ; but 
there is no wood in the world, or knowledge 
that any has ever existed in it, that did not 
become a seen thing by growing as the trees 
about us are now doing, invisibly increasing 
their bulk as the blades of grass do. 

If now we question any other visible thing 
simply to find the original state of its ma- 
terial atoms, our progress will be towards 
invisible fluids, and we shall find by exact 
history and careful analysis that the final 
material elements out of, and by which, all 
things seen are made have been in some 
previous time invisible atoms in a fluid 
state. 



14 Seen and Unseen, 

And no exception to be made to this state- 
ment as a universal truth. There is nothing 
in all the world about us, of things organized 
or unorganized, that does not bring to our 
minds the clear testimony that its visible 
form comes of the assembling or collecting 
of material atoms that somewhere existed 
before in a fluid and invisible state. 

I am not speaking now of what it is that 
bas changed the fluid atoms and made some 
of them into visible things, but simply of 
the fact that they have been changed, or 
collected, and are now held together in mak- 
ing what is seen out of the unseen. 

Our visible world has all come out to view 
by reason of changes from a former state of 
its own elements, in which it was an unseen 
existence and its elements were free in space 
and of such variety and number as Infinite 
Wisdom chose to use, or to provide for His 
intended use in the making of things visible 
for this world and probably for all worlds. 

A perfect analysis of any solid shows its 
elements to be of fluid descent. The granu- 



Seen and Unseen, 15 

lation and crystallization of rocks and metals 
bears witness to the same thing as clearly 
and certainly as a cake of ice bears witness 
to its former condition as water. There was 
liquid before crystallization and fluid before 
liquid. But without actual analysis we find 
the atoms singly are quite too small to be 
visible. No single atom of matter has ever 
been seen, hence by reason we know if they 
were liberated from cohesion and each one 
to go free in space, solids would again pass 
to a fluid state and be obedient to the law of 
repulsion. There would then be no visible 
things anywhere. The atoms of the world, 
in that state, would be spread out in space, 
floating among themselves and changing 
places with one another by diffusion, as 
atoms now do and doubtless have always 
done when free in space. 

If now we think of the new made earth in 
that state, simply manifesting the law of 
repulsion, its atoms all spread out so as to 
be very nearly trauspareut, as they certainly 
must have been at the first, there will come to 



16 Seen and Unseen, 

our minds the most fitting descriptive words 
that have ever been written, and these were 
written thousands of years ago, (Gen. 1:2,) 

" And the earth was without form and void." 

Yes, and not the earth only, but the ma- 
terial universe entire, as it first emanated 
from its Creator, invisible to the eyes of men. 

I use the words fluids and solids in con- 
trast with each other, so that the two words, 
fluids and solids, may include every atom of 
matter in the whole physical world with the 
ether beyond the skies. The two words re- 
late to matter in exactly opposite conditions 
and in all possible measures of differences, 
from the least to the greatest. 

Matter in a solid state is always visible and 
capable of being examined by our senses, 
always has some cohesion of atoms, and is 
capable of being acted upon by gravitation 
and many other laws of coherent matter. 
But in a fluid state, free from the law of co- 
hesion, we find it manifesting only the 
opposite ; that is, the law of repulsion of all 
its atoms. Every atom repels every other 



Seen and Unseen. 17 

atom, so that the mass, in the infinity of its 
numbers, spreads abroad as the fluids of the 
air are now doing. In this condition all 
atoms are out of sight, because each one is 
too small to be seen ; but when these same 
atoms are combined and brought under the 
law of cohesion, and any two or more of 
them are chemically united and made one — 
as, for example, oxygen and hydrogen 
gas, each one invisible by itself, but when 
the two are joined by electricity or heat, the 
product is water, a plainly visible liquid — I 
do not say fluid, for, by our definition of 
fluids and solids, water and all liquids are on 
the side with solid9. Some cohesion is 
manifested in its formation of drops, which 
is not discoverable in fluids or atoms free in 
space. In this state, the fluid, repulsion of 
atoms is the law manifested ; in the other 
cohesion of atoms is the law manifested. 
The one force makes things visible and many 
atoms to occupy a small space, in the other 
matter is invisible and many atoms spread 
themselves out over a very large space. So 



18 Seen and Unseen. 

it is evident that no microscope can ever 
show to us an isolated atom of matter. We 
- class water and all other liquids with solids 
because they are visible and have cohesion 
in a slight degree. Air and all the gases of 
every kind, however many there may be, 
while free in space, the light ether in the 
skies in which the stars are seen, electric- 
ity, magnetism, heat, light and whatever 
in matter is either matter, or a property or a 
force manifested in matter and known to 
move in it as a force without being organ- 
ized in it as a living thing, we will regard as 
a fluid. 

The practical distinction thus made in all 
the material things in the whole world is 
between the seen and the unseen. 

The seen things are solids, the unseen are 
fluids. The heaviest of solids, as gold, may 
be made volatile by heat, and we often see it 
in a semi-fluid state giving a golden hue to 
the smoke that rises skyward from the tall 
chimney at the mint where gold is fused and 
liquified for manufacture and coinage. 



Seen and Unseen. 19 

^Electricity has long been called a fluid, and 
there is no reason for withholding the name 
from other occult forces exclusive of life and 
spirit. Let material elements in invisible 
form be fluids if we speak of them as things, 
and the same elements when in seen things 
be solids, and our definition will be easily 
understood and applied to all material 
existences as belonging, at the time we are 
speaking of them, to one or the other of 
these two classes — 

11 Seen and Unseen." 

The material world, as now understood, by 
itself consists of many kinds of matter, 
seventy or more, the exact number not yet 
known. All these simple kinds of matter 
are capable of existence and can be found in 
space free from cohesion, and in that state 
we can think of them as a vast expanse of 
misty matter, enough for a world it may be, 
but without objective form, or gravitation, 
or manifested, orbital, or axial motions. 

But a change came, and art-like a visible 
world appeared within the invisible ; objec- 



20 Seen and Unseen. 

tive form, cohesion and gravitation, orbital 
and axial motions, and numerous other laws 
of matter were manifested ; and still the law 
of repulsion continues its manifestations as 
it did from the beginning and as now seen 
in the air. 

The aggregate work of repulsion is seen 
now in all existing space not taken up with 
solids, and the aggregate work of cohesion 
in the world is seen in all the solids thus far 
made. To the eye of reason the latter must 
have come in time relations after the former. 

There is a likeness to this truth in the 
relation of letters to the words in our printed 
language. A few letters (26) are the ele- 
ments out of which all the words are made. 
Bach letter had an existence before it had a 
place in any word in which it is now found. 
And we do not think of a dictionary with its 
many thousands of w r ords as coming into 
existence otherwise than by collection, 
arrangements and contribution of letters 
from the alphabet. First the mass of letters, 
then the words, sentences and discourses to- 



Seen and Unseen. 21 

be put in due form for priutiug. So in like 
manner we think of all solids as made of 
atoms of matter selected from pre-existing 
matter in a fluid state, but now assembled, 
arranged and combined so as to cohere to- 
gether in the beautiful forms we see in 
greater numbers, thousands of times more 
in number than the words of the largest 
dictionary unabridged. To think of one 
such object as existing before the atoms of 
which it is made would be to break away 
from logical thinking, and to bow a leave- 
taking from our own common sense. Reason 
stands on the ample evidence that the gene- 
sis of every visible thing, and therefore of 
all the world, was in fluid atoms too small 
to be seen by the human eye, even with the 
microscope, and when so crowded as to be 
faintly visible in places it was a nebulous 
cloud, "without form and void," in- 
capable in that state of acting conformably 
to the law of gravitation or of performing 
any of the distinctive functions of a solid,, 
body. 



22 Seen and Unseen. 

The earth in that condition would mani- 
fest supremely the law of repulsion, while all 
the other laws of matter would for the time 
being be hidden from our view. We do not 
imagine they were not in existence, only 
they could not be manifested to outside ob- 
servers. It is true that gravitation is dis- 
coverable in the air and in gases, but the air 
is a compound fluid and presumably has 
some cohesion. It is not entirely invisible 
for its blue gives us the sky over our heads. 
There is a strong probability that the fluid 
ether beyond the sky has no cohesion, and 
is therefore invisible and the law of repul- 
sion alone is there manifested, and that 
light is not there obstructed by any atmos- 
pheric color. 

Notice now that we can see no reason in 
science or in law why matter might not 
have remained in that state of repulsion of 
atoms unchangeably forever, as it was at 
the creation, an unorganized quantity 
of material, and there left for eternity. 
So far as reason is concerned it says 



Seen and Unseen. 2& 

nothing against it. But the Creator of 
the universe had not so intended. He 
started what He had made to become visible 
on a great career of changes not yet, if ever, 
to be completed. The Divine word to the 
world as a material creation was that it 
should take up its work and not stay one 
moment in one state, place and condition; 
and it did not, but is still progressing on- 
ward in its system of orderly changes. But 
let us think a moment of that marvelous 
condition of a world all afloat in atoms too 
small to be seen, some of them to be made 
into light, and what microscope is there 
that can show to the eye of man one isolated 
atom of light ? Only the Creator, we be- 
lieve, has ever seen an ultimate atom of 
matter. Hence we can never know any dif- 
ference in the atoms of different substances 
until, in the laboratory of nature, or art they 
are brought together, each after its own 
kind, in sufficient quantities to be apprecia- 
ble. No single atom ever reflects light or 
produces any impression upon the most deli- 



24: Seen and Unseen. 

cate of our sense organs. Yet in such infin- 
itesimal atoms did God create the 
* 'heaven and the earth.' * From this new 
heaven and earth, in such a state, visible 
things were eventually made to come forth ; 
and we now see uncounted millions of ob- 
jects about us free from the manifestation of 
repulsion and obedient to the law of cohe- 
sion. 

The field of repulsion is still as vast as it 
was at the beginning, but there is now a 
comparatively small field within it in which 
the law of cohesion is exhibiting in contrast 
a wonderful world of visible things, and 
the two laws are now co-acting harmoni- 
ously together, but in exact contrast. Reason 
asks whence came this transference of so 
many of the atoms of matter and yet not of 
all of them ? Why did not the law or force 
of cohesion w T hich holds some of all kinds of 
atoms together in solids, a law which is 
confessedly everywhere present with power 
to act, why did it not make a complete 



Seen and Unseen. 25 

victory over repulsion and so hold all the 
atoms of matter together in solids ? 

Transforming them from fluidity to solids, 
or even to one solid mass and nothing more. 
If cohesion among atoms had been a spon- 
taneity, an inheritance of force in the atoms 
themselves, such a result would be our rea- 
sonable expectation. 

But the law of cohesion that has part in 
all the solids in the world and preserves their 
integrity, giving to us all the variety and 
beauty there is in things seen, that law 
was not a spontaneity. If by any chance 
thought of ours we might imagine atoms of 
matter in long time becoming in some way 
magnetized so as to stick together of them- 
selves, there would be no reason why all 
atoms should not go right on in like manner 
accreting together until all should become 
one mineral mass, an unspeakably worthless 
thing, and nothiug more. 

We* read of the creation, that "the 
morning stars sang together and all the sons 
of God shouted for joy," (Job. 38: 7,) and 



"26 Seen and Unseen. 

we may be very certain that the unfolding 
plans of God, the Father, were seen from 
above before such thrills of admiration vi- 
brated down upon the work from its high 
witnesses in heaven. But our question re- 
mains — Why did not the force of cohesion 
take in all the matter of which it did 
take some ? Science has no answer. 
Philosophy hints no solution. We can see 
no reason in the laws themselves, and 
we have not advanced enough in world 
reading to find an answer. So we must 
look upwards to the Divine Creator's 
will. There we find the adequate and ulti- 
mate cause of all causes. As our minds are 
constituted, it is unavoidable that we turn 
to the personal being who knows, when no 
other cause can be given, as in this case. 
We find the law of cohesion acting within 
certain limitations, just the limitations In- 
finite beneficence would advise, and we be- 
lieve God decreed those limitations ; but no 
man can tell why some atoms were taken 
and some were left. As we can see no 



Seen and Unseen. 27 

reason beforehand, but Our Father's own 
will, why He made the world, so the adjust- 
ments of all the laws of nature, one with 
another, takes us back to the same fouutain 
of causes. 

The Diviue beneficence, His love of 
moral beings, the Fatherhood of God to 
angels and men, is becoming plainer and 
plainer as the world's career is better known 
and the use of its changes better understood. 
The law of repulsion as first seen was a 
marvelous display of Divine Power, but it 
did not then show any moral quality or any 
good will to men, or that it was to be for 
the use of men. But now it has an exalted 
place of usefulness in the world. It has now 
a moral work, a work of beneficence not 
exceeded by any other law of physical na- 
ture. If we think of what it now does in 
keeping the air fit for us to breathe, in 
keeping it in a fit condition to bear the light 
to our open eyes, in a fit condition for the 
bright shining orbs of distant worlds to be 
seen by us, and with all in a fit condition to- 



"28 Seen and Unseen. 

make life real and joyous and hopeful; 
whoever will consider the contrast between 
pure air and malaria, and then behold all 
the indications of the Divine plan to im- 
prove the atmosphere of our world by all 
the geological changes He appointed for it 
from the first, will not be wanting in proofs 
of the beneficence of the Divine Will. All 
advances in science and religion show this. 
Compared with the very first this is now a 
new earth and heaven, and the old is ever 
vanishing away to give place to the new. 
We feel that our Heavenly Father intended 
good results, and provided for them by an 
ascending scale of creative progress into the 
future of the world to come. This is our 
abiding confidence in our Creator Father. It 
is quite impossible for us who live in a Chris- 
tian land to feel that the will of God is not 
beneficent and the safest guide to us for our 
own well being. Whatever we may fear 
from our own ill deservings, we do not fear 
any injustice from the Creator Almighty — 
41 Our Father in Heaven." No other court 



Seen and Unseen. 29 

of final appeal can be opened to us, and no 
other could compare with this in " Wisdom, 
Holiness, Justice, Goodness and Truth.' ' The 
will of Him who is the " King Eternal, Im- 
mortal, Invisible — the only wise God" — 
holds the scepter of Righteousness and 
Good Will to men. 

It is rather a boast of science to explore 
all known things to their original elements 
or sources, to a point where we can know 
no more of them at present. And such a 
vanishing point of human knowledge is 
always present in the final analysis of any 
created thing, when we must needs refer to 
the Divine Will and stand upon the Omni- 
present line that distinguishes the created 
thing from its Creator — God. 

As we now understand the known things 
of the creation of the world, as we now read 
the world, the Supreme Act of Original 
Creation included nothing in itself to be 
seen of men, and nothing in itself known to 
men. 

No one atom of matter in all the universe, 



30 Seen and Unseen. 

furnished as it now is with atoms made vis- 
ible in the heaven and the earth, was at first 
made large euongh to be seen of men. And 
this plan of the Creator's work has never 
changed. It is now as then, first the unseen 
then the seen. 

u No man hath seen God at any time. The 
only Begotten Son, which is in the bosom of 
the Father, he hath declared him." — John 
1:18. 

All life is from the unseen, and all its 
normal physical works begin in the use of 
atoms in an unseen manner; in the use of 
atoms in such a manner it makes for itself 
bodies, the seen from the unseen. 

We may marvel at such a plan and won- 
der if God could make a world out of such 
unstable things, and so great a world with- 
out being seen in doing it. But God's ways 
not as our ways and His thoughts as 
our thoughts, and His works are not per- 
formed as our works are. In World Read- 
ing our eyes must look patiently upon the 
thiugs He has made for us to look upon in 



Seen and Unseen. 31 

the " heaven and in the earth" — seen and 
unseen. 

Behold the witnesses for God ! The sun 
by day leads the train and the moon and 
stars by night, forever singing as they shine, 
the hand that 

" Made Us Is Divine." 

Truly the heavens declare the glory of 
God and the firmament showeth His handi- 
work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and 
night unto night showeth knowledge. There 
is no speech nor language where their voice 
is not heard. Their line is gone out through 
all the earth, and their words to the end of 
the world. In them hath He set a taber- 
nacle for the Sun, which is as a bridegroom 
coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth 
as a strong man to run a race. His going 
forth is from the end of the heaven, and his 
circuit unto the ends of it, and there is 
nothing hid from the heat thereof. The law 
of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. 
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making 
wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord 



32 Seen and Unseen. 

are right, rejoicing the heart. The com- 
mandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening- 
the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, 
enduring forever. The judgments of the 
Lord are true and righteous altogether. 
More to be desired are they than gold, yea 
than much fine gold. Sweeter also than 
honey and the honeycomb . Moreover, by 
them is thy servant warned, and in keeping* 
of them there is great reward. Who can 
understand his errors? Cleanse thou me 
from secret faults. Keep back thy servant 
also from presumptuous sins ; let them not 
have dominion over me; then shall I be up- 
right and I shall be innocent from the great 
transgression. Let the words of my mouth 
and the meditation of my heart be accept- 
able in thy sight, " O Lord, My Strength 
and My Redeemer." — Ps. 19. 



" And darkness was upon the face'of 

the deep.' 1 

—Genesis, 1:2. 



SOLIDS AND FLUIDS. 

CHAPTER II. 

We have defined the words, fluids and 
solids ; names of all the matter in the world 
in opposite conditions of atoms and reveal- 
ing to us the opposite laws, repulsion and 
cohesion. 

As long as the world consisted of atoms, all 
in a state of repulsion of one another, no 
human conception of a solid earth coming 
out of them could reasonably be formed. 
Hence the outcome of a visible world in the 
midst of those created atoms, " without 
form and void," was a transformation, on its 
first appearance, truly wonderful beyond 
expression. As things are now manifested 
around us the number of atoms held to- 
gether in solids, the visible world, gains 



36 Solids and Fluids. 

our first attention. And we are liable to 
think of the invisible world as a place pretty 
far away and not as a place into which we 
are born, and in which we are still living, 
though it be at the lower border of it where 
it broods on the visible. 

We a re not told in simple words in what 
way or by what means the earth, <f without 
form and void," was made ready to evolve 
the visible world out of its midst, or so to 
divide its atoms that some of them should be 
made to evolve from the invisible to the 
visible state and thus to manifest the law of 
cohesion, while others remained as they were, 
spread abroad to the outer boundaries of 
creation as far as the law of repulsion has 
dominion. But we are furnished with the 
most graphic picture ever written of what 
the world looked like wheu that change was 
in progress. " And darkness was upon the 
face of the deep." Gen. i : 2. This, like 
the first view of the earth after its creation, 
was taken by an outside observation. The 
darkness was seen objectively as a visible 



Solids and Fluids. 37 

thiug, and thus cohesion was manifested as 
a law acting upon material atoms in solids. 
We must know, however, that cohesion acts 
only between atoms at an insensible distance 
apart and never directly upon matter in a 
■state of repulsion of atoms. Cohesion does 
not collect atoms ; it holds them together 
when they touch each other ; hence we do 
not meau to say in any case that cohesion 
alone makes solids, but that solids always do 
manifest that law to us as a constant law of 
their existence. 

It is reasonable for us therefore to ask 
how the atoms so situated in space became 
disposed to a simultaneous act of self assem- 
bling in readiness to cohere ? How were 
they removed from their first situation 
abroad and apart and so drawn together as to 
become visible, becoming obedient to a 
new law and to many new laws besides the 
law of cohesion ? The atoms now cohering 
in the earth and all the solids of the same 
must have spread out in a state of repulsion 
millions of miles around and away from any 



38 Solids and Fluids, 

common centre. The question is, who gave 
so many of them a rallying impulse, a sim- 
ultaneous mobility towards a common 
centre ? In a general way they moved up to 
each other and all towards a common centre. 
The existence of the visible earth is proof 
that something of that kind has taken place ; 
atoms did come together, for here they are 
under the law of cohesion, many of them 
solid rocks, and every one of them has the 
true character of a transformation from a 
fluid state. Whatever may have been the 
distance apart of these atoms in the atomic 
world before they were collected, at the 
time appointed they arrived at the places 
where we now find them in this small cen- 
tral part of the first created atomic world. 
We here notice a well-known and universal 
law of matter, which is, that motion with 
compression of atoms always produces heat 
in proportion to the rapidity of motion and 
intensity of pressure combined. We judge 
therefore that the motion and compression 
of atoms concerned in this first stage of the 



Solids and Fluids. 39 

world evolution, by which the solids came 
forth, must have produced a volume of heat 
of such intensity as to stagger arithmetical 
calculations. 

Heat by chemical action was, of course, 
one of the forces in this compression, as 
well as electricity ; but that does nothing to 
solve the question, or to tell how the atoms 
were made ready for that special, electrical 
and chemical action, either alone or with 
other forces. 

The compression of matter by whatever 
means from a volume so immense as the 
earth was in its nebulous form, and is now 
in its unseen part, to a sphere so small as 
8000 miles in diameter, must have produced 
an enormous amount of heat in the com- 
pressed materials ; while at the same time 
the outlying and surrounding space would 
"be so rarefied by the matter withdrawn 
from it as to occasion a high degree of cold 
in all the space so rarefied. The compres- 
sion of atoms would generate fervent heat 
and the rarefaction of the outlying atoms 



40 Solids and Fluids. 

from which they were taken the most in- 
tense cold. So we may, for the time, think 
of a fiery centre all aglow with consuming 
heat, inclosed in a hollow sphere of vaporous 
fluid of intensest cold. The two states of 
matter, hot and cold, are placed in the 
strongest contrast and their battle grouud is 
now between them. 

If we stop here we shall not get the 
world's true appearance as it must have 
been at that time. A glowing ball of fire 
was not what an outside observer at a dis- 
tance would have seen, for we find that 
the elements of the solids of the earth are 
not all capable of being solidified by heat 
alone. Some of them cannot be so solidi- 
fied. Water, the largest of all the external 
solids, cannot, though heat is generated in 
its production by the union of the gases in 
the chemical and electrical fire that forms 
it; when thus formed into water it is by heat 
turned into steam, and wafted by heat force 
into the cold air surrounding it, where it be- 
comes a dense cloud of vapor and cooling 



Solids and Fluids. 41 

returns to water aud ice. When we think 
of all the liquids, with their respective 
properties, as carbon and other materials 
that heat would turn into smoke and steam 
to be condensed on reaching the outside 
cold circle above, yet somewhat nearer the 
fiery mass than the circle of extreme cold, 
we shall see at once that it was not the fiery 
ball that an outside observer would see far 
away from without, but rather the darkness 
of the steam and smoke inclosing the globe 
of fire within it. This outside wrapper that 
the consumption of gases must have pro- 
duced could have been nothing else than a 
globe of darkness. When a great city is on 
fire it is not the fire that is seen afar off, 
but the smoke. When Abraham looked 
away upon the burning Sodom and Gomor- 
rah, the cities of the plain, " Lo, the smoke . 
of the country went up as a furnace," (Gen. 
19:28.) 

The greater the fire the greater the dark- 
ness to a distant outside observer must be, 
until the fuel becomes incandescent, for 



42 Solids and Fluids. 

however high the flames may mount up the 
smoke keeps always above it with its dark- 
ness. Combustion is a process of intense 
chemical action in which two or more kinds 
of elements must undergo extreme changes. 
If we think of an electric fire 8,000 miles in 
diameter, over 25,000 miles in circumfer- 
ence, all aglow under the great open arch 
of creation, and fed by the inflow of all the 
chemical atoms that became the solids of 
the earth, including liquids, we shall find it 
impossible to exaggerate the quantity of 
smoke that rose to the rarefied ether, to the 
cold above it around the whole circle of 
the globe. 

Let us call the earth as it then was, i( A 
Deep," and then say, "And darkness was 
upon the face of the deep," (Gen. 1:2)— 
A deep of fire around which was an envelope 
of smoke, within which the elemental fire 
of creation was making ready the materials 
to come forth in due time as the original 
solids of the earth at its own natural center 
of the world. Chemical transformations 



Solids a?id Fluids. 43 

are pre-eminently like new creations. No 
man can forecast what the product will be 
from any new combination of elements 
chemically united. We have learned that 
carbon and oxygen so uniting produce fire 
during the process of uuiting and then leave 
a resultant that is counter fire. And though 
to outward appearances the carbon is gone, 
it is not. It is simply transformed into a 
gaseous state and combined with the oxygen 
that consumed it. And though the change 
is so inconceivably great, nothing is lost ; 
and presumably these changes will continue 
to produce surprising transformations for- 
ever, and that not one atom will be de- 
stroyed thereby. Neither fire nor anything 
«lse ever destroy the atoms of matter, but 
only set them free to form new combina- 
tions or to go again under the law of re- 
pulsion and diffusion. All combinations 
are formed by definite laws, and many of 
them in definite proportions of atoms also. 
Thus we see reasons for an enormous heat 
in the chemical processes of the fluids 



44 Solids and Fluids. 

brought together in making their endless 
adjustments. But as fast as adjustments 
were reached in the formation of com- 
pounds, rocks, metals and water, a compara- 
tive state of quietude must have ensued. 

How long the hot world was kept busy 
with its chemical adjustments with rock,, 
metals, salts, alkalies, acids, carbon and 
lime before the removal of its outside dark- 
ness, we cannot tell. Internal chemical 
action in all the elements of its mineral 
formation, keeping up heat, steam and smoke 
in opposition to the ethereal cold beyond it, 
w r ould indicate a condition that might be so 
balanced as to continue for long ages of 
time. The Bible gives us no hint upon this 
question. We are left with full liberty to 
take all the time needed. But it must have 
been an exceedingly long time before all the 
processes of nature included in the forma- 
tion of the complete list of mineral solids 
now known, together with all the changes 
of place and state in the elements that 
could be affected' as well without the direct 



Solids and Fluids. 45 

rays of the sun as with them, were fully ac- 
complished. Evidently it may have ex- 
tended through millions of years. It must 
have continued until the world was shaped 
up to a great extent and its crust became 
cool enough in places to allow carbon to be 
taken up in vegetable organisms, and lime 
to be worked over and used by animal lives 
for the frame work of their bodies, that is 
shells. And until much of the condensed 
steam upon it was reduced to the form of 
water. And not only so, but an enormous 
quantity of water. If a fraction of the water 
now on the earth were turned into steam at 
the earth's surface, an envelope of fog 
would again cut off the direct rays of the 
sun and darkness would again be on the 
earth during its continuance, and yet, pos- 
sibly, without stopping in a large degree 
some of the processes of nature. 

I emphasize my remark that much may 
have been done in the world without the 
direct rays of the sun, and before the sun 
could have been clearly seen from its sur- 



46 Solids and Fluids. 

face, because it is reasonable in itself aud 
accordant with the report given in Genesis. 
" God said let there be light and there was 
light," evidently before the firmanent was 
completed aud while the skyward region 
was in a state of mixture of light and dark- 
ness as we now have in foggy mornings. 
Fogs in Englaud sometimes obscure for 
days the direct rays of the sun over their 
well kept and beautiful fields and gardens. 
Probably the sun's rays did not touch the 
solid parts of the earth so as to reveal its 
own bright form in the heavens, as seen 
from the earth for a long time after it was 
lighting the earth sufficiently for some 
purposes. Perhaps not until a comparatively 
late period. Certainly not until the granite 
and other primary rocks had been formed 
and cooled down in part, then broken up 
again and again, and seethed and boiled in 
the liquid floods, and still cooling in greater 
quantities until rocks and mountains and 
volcanoes began to make a frame work over 
the fiery deep and amid the immensity of 



Solids and Fluids. 47 

prevailing waters, before the fog could have 
cleared away. It may have been that at any 
time during long ages, if need be, an out- 
side observer looking towards the earth 
would see but a globe of darkness, for we 
must not forget that this view was objective 
and that the observer's standpoint was out- 
side of the earth until a firmament was 
made. 

11 God said let there be a firmanent in the 
midst of the waters, and let it divide the 
waters from the waters." Gen. i : 6. Now 
the observer's standpoint must be entirely 
changed. He must now be down upon the 
solids of the earth, which are a very small 
part of its whole magnitude, and the fir- 
manent must be over him. And thus the 
materials of the w T hole world throughout all 
of its original space,including the firmanent, 
all that was included in the " beginning 
when God created the heaven and the 
earth," is clearly separated into tw r o mineral 
parts — the 

SOLIDS AXD FLUIDS. 



48 Solids and Fluids. 

Science teaches that all that is known as 
matter in the world may be conveniently 
divided into three classes, and that each one 
of these classes may be called a kingdom. 
The first, which is the mineral kingdom, 
then the vegetable and animal kingdoms. 
And now where do we place the air in which 
all the fluids, the gases and extended ether 
by which the light comes to us from the sun 
and the moon and the stars, where shall we 
place all the matter that exists in a fluid 
state ? Not in the animal kingdom certainly, 
for animals have form and organs of life by 
which they may be known separately, even 
microscopic lives may be known separately. 
The air in its nature is not animal and does 
not belong to the animal kingdom. Is the 
air then a vegetable ? Well, vegetables have 
form and organs of life and a place to stay 
while they grow, aud where they^may be 
found to-day and to-morrow. "But the 
wind bloweth where it listeth and we 
hear the sound thereof, but cannot tell 



Solids and Fluids. 49 

whence it corneth and whither it goeth." 
This is not a vegetable ; and now we 
are left alone in the mineral kingdom. 
Kach of the others has failed us. If we can- 
not get gaseous fluids, the air and like 
matter in here, it will be left out alone with 
no class to receive it. But it is not left 
out. The essential elements of matter in 
the air and of all fluids are mineral elements. 
In every human breath there is some car- 
bonic acid gas, some carbon. And the dia- 
mond, among the hardest of minerals and 
the most brilliant of gems, is nearly all car- 
bon. Reduce the diamond to invisible 
atoms and it will still be mineral. In our 
breaths the atoms of carbon are fluid, or 
free in space and in a state of repulsion, 
while in the diamond like atoms are held in 
a state of cohesion in the closest of contact, 
like atoms, indeed, but changed in their re- 
lations to one another from a state of repul- 
sion to a state of cohesion. This change 
does not remove them from one and the 
same kingdom. Air and all fluids, as we 



50 Solids and Fluids. 

have defined fluids, belong to the mineral 
kingdom, in distinction to the other two 
kindgoms, animal and vegetable. This 
should be understood strictly as pertaining 
to its essential atoms in the invisible fluid 
state. We would not call a visible drop of 
water a mineral, nor a gust of wind a 
mineral. But we must and do class the ele- 
ments of these things in the mineral king- 
dom, because their essential atoms are 
mineral and readily distinguishable from 
organized matter in either animal or vege- 
table. All unorganized matter is mineral. 

The original creation revealed only the 
mineral kingdom in a fluid state and of 
atoms singly too small to be seen of men. It 
is well to keep this in mind always in con- 
sidering the history of the elements through 
their many transformations before their 
present appearance in visible things around 
us. By the first formation of solids the 
mineral kingdom was divided into two parts 
as unlike each other as opposite states of 
matter can be, and still that dividing pro- 



Solids and Fluids. 51 

•cess was only the beginning of changes in 
both parts of the kingdom. As to solids, 
themselves, but very few if any of them can 
now be shown to be in the exact conditions 
of their original formation. As to the rocks, 
they have been broken up, cast out of vol- 
canoes, tumbled about and mashed in pieces 
and ground to powder ; reformed and broken 
up again and ground and washed and mixed, 
made plastic and again hardened. Some 
conglomerated, and by the mechanical 
forces of nature thrown into the lodgments 
of the earth where we now find them. Some 
in the everlasting hills, and some beneath 
the bottom of the seas. All have been fire 
worked and water worked, and very many 
indeed have been life worked into the soils 
and chemicals of the earth, and into sedi- 
ments beneath its waters, and into vegetable 
and animal organisms. All the mechanical 
and all the electrical and all the life forces 
of this world are ever active in preparing 
matter for new conditions and uses, new 
combination and appearances, so that crea- 



52 Solids and Fluids, 

tion itself in its grand career of progress is a 
daily promiser of a new heaven and a new 
earth. Geology teaches us plainly that loug 
ages before man appeared in the world life 
was here in great power in both vetetable and 
animal forms. There were vegetable growths 
of marvelous dimensions and in great vari- 
eties, and animals great and small, from the 
megatherium and other monsters down to 
minute forms, living things of microscopic 
dimensions. Fossils of many kinds, both 
flora and fauna, are found in the earth's- 
crusts after the first. So prolific in plant 
and tree growths was the earth long ages 
ago, as to support the animals of that time 
and leave a residuum sufficient for the coal 
beds we are now mining and distributing 
for the use of man. Also, on the animal 
side, the mere bones and shells of past 
generations occupy no small place among 
the solids of the earth, so obviously did 
lower lives work in ages past and left the re- 
sults of their labors in a better prepared 
world for the use of man. 



Solids and Fluids. 53- 

Carboii was not solidified by heat alone, 
neither by cold ; but it required life, veg- 
etable and animal, to solidify it. And so in 
respect to the elements of chalk-beds and 
lime-stone and coral-reefs ; their elements 
were operated upon by life-agencies, animal 
life, and thus reduced to solids and removed 
from the atmosphere in such quantities as to 
make an atmosphere of use to higher orders 
of beings. The fossils of the earth's crust 
are no very small part of its solids, and 
many of them must have been entombed 
long before the creation of man. Let all the 
carbon and lime now in solids as fossil re- 
mains be turned again into a'gaseous form, 
and the air would be, the world over, unfit 
for human beings as we are now consti- 
tuted. The truth of the early introduction 
of life into visible forms seems to give a 
reason for the words following : "And the 
spirit of God moved upon the tace of the 
waters." (Gen. i;2.) We notice that the 
largest part of the earth's surface is even 
now liquid — water. There is something 



54 Solids and Fluids. 

very significant in the Bible names given to 
the world in its different states after its cre- 
ation, while on its way of readiness for man. 
First, It was named broadly with its own 
proper name : In the beginning God cre- 
ated the " heaven and the earth." Second, 
When it began to be objectively visible to a 
very slight extent, its proper name is re- 
peated and a descriptive clause subjoined : 
"And the earth was without form and void." 
Tnird, It is called the " Deep," and the de- 
scriptive word "darkness" is subjoined : 
"And darkness was upon the face of the 
deep." Fourth, It is called waters, as God 
again acted upon it : "And the spirit of 
God moved upon the face of the waters." 
It is evident that the author of such de- 
scriptive words was well instructed about the 
genesis of the world and the stages of its 
progressive career. But it is equally evi- 
dent that he did not intend to give any de- 
tailed account of it. We find that every 
word that bears upon the creation is point- 
ing directly and with emphasis to its Cre- 



Solids and Fluids. 55* 

ator. The object was to tell zvho made the 
world and not how He did it, any further 
than a few brief signs would help to settle 
the fact that God made it in its beginning 
and all the way after it. He gives the key 
to the study of its elements, and names the 
appearances of its earlier transformations, 
and then leads on with directness and force 
to Theology and Religion. "And the spirit 
of God moved upon the face of the waters. " 
This implies a life-giving presence of God 
over the elements thus described, and we 
presume that the vegetable and animal lives 
introduced at that time were not, any of 
them, to come up to observation in review 
as a part of the instruction to be given by 
revelation respecting the doctrines of The- 
ology and Religion. The distinct mention 
that God did act upon the waters and moved-* 
upon them, before the sun is mentioned as 
having been seen from man's standpoint on- 
the solid earth, makes it probable that He 
supplied all the kinds of life that were suited 
to that time, and that all the laws of life- 



56 Solids and Fluids. 

possible at that time were duly inaugurated 
aud continue in force, wherever matter is 
conditioned to receive them, until this day. 
It would be hard to show that any law of 
nature has ever been repealed. As the tem- 
perature and food required by certain kinds 
of life superabounded long ages before the 
world was ready for man's use, we have no 
reason to doubt that a life grant was Di- 
vinely given to all creatures, great and 
small, capable of exercising the functions of 
life at that time. 

It is always reasonable to have regard to 
the intentions of an author in explaining 
the words he sets before us. Why did the 
author of the first chapter of the Bible refer 
to the creation of the world except to say in 
the most positive manner that all this, in all 
the views that can be taken of it and in all 
that it can include, was the work of God ? 
and to emphasize it strongly as a fact by 
declaring that he did it in such a way as to 
show a series of changes in its progress, 
and to include all that can be learned by 



Solids and Fluids. 57 

human observation now or at any time ? 
First, God created it at the beginning. He 
was its author when it was in material 
atoms ; was "without form and void." Af- 
ter that it became enveloped in darkness : 
" Darkness was upon the face of the deep," 
when cohesion took place and the solids 
were made, including the waters. After the 
waters, life was introduced in organisms, 
"the spirit of God moved upon the waters." 
life was given to the visible part of the 
world. Light came by God's command- 
ment. He made the firmament, and night 
and day became an established fact. He 
appointed seas and furnished the water, and 
the air and the land with all the varieties of 
Life-forms that preceded the introduction of 
man ; and in His own time he made man in 
His own image. " Let us make man in our 
image." "So God created man in His own 
image, in the image of God created he him, 
male and female created he them." 

This likeness included the idea of instruct- 
ing men by the Divine example, the en- 



-58 Solids and Fluids. 

forcetnent of Divine precepts by Divine 
examples. This one principle started in the 
first chapter of the Bible and runs through 
the whole book. " Be ye holy," says God to 
us, "for I am holy." " Be ye followers of 
•God as dear children," implying a natural 
affection that should be a life joy in the 
hearts of men loving God as their " Father 
in heaven." il Put ye on the Lord Jesus." 
I see no reason for the mention of a six days 
which are named with such exactness of de- 
scription : "And the evening and the morn- 
ing were the first day," etc., but to place God 
before us working six days and resting on 
the seventh, and thus, by his own example, 
made the Sabbath to follow the six days of 
labor just as he requires us to keep it. He 
made it to follow the sixth day of labor to us 
as we count time, and He applied this mea- 
sure of time to himself figuratively — the 
only possible way of its applicaton by finite 
minds — to bring His own example before us 
in regard to the Sabbath day, and to show 
that it is sanctified and holy, ordained of 



Solids and Fluids. 50 

God for the use of man, The language is 
figurative as applied to the works of God, 
but it is literal as it stands iu conuectiou 
with the decalogue and all other Scripture 
teaching on the subject of the Sabbath day. 
We should hesitate to adopt any view of 
the six days that would take them out of 
harmony with Bible teaching on the subject 
of the Sabbath day. In this matter, on the 
human side these days must be construed 
literally for our instruction, to give us the 
measure of time intended for our weekly use, 
in w ? ork or rest ; and figuratively, to give us 
the condescending example of God in respect 
to His work and rest in the works of crea- 
tion. In the second chapter of this book,, 
fourth verse, in which the Sabbath is not 
concerned, the time of creation is designated 
indefinitely by a mere allusion to it as a 
fact : " In the day that the Lord God made 
the earth and the heavens." (Gen. 2:4.) 
This shows that "day " as we count days, is 
not to be taken as a time measure of the act 
of God in the creation. A moment's careful 



150 Solids and Fluids. 

reflection will show us that there is no way 
in which we can measure any work of God 
by time measure as applied to Himself with- 
out intermediate agencies. Divine acts are 
not time acts in the sense of lingering 
through space with no intermediate agen- 
cies. God appoints the time and sea- 
son for others, but we cannot take these 
up and apply them to Him or to any 
of His direct and literal works. We can- 
not say that God made a mammoth Califor- 
nia tree in one moment, or in one hour — a 
tree that has been growing fifteen hundred 
years ; neither can we say that he was fifteen 
hundred years in making it. We can say 
fifteen hundred years have passed since that 
tree was planted, since the seed from which 
it grew was placed in the soil. But the ques- 
tion, " When was that tree made? " remains 
unanswered, because we cannot discover the 
beginning and end of a Divine act in such a 
way as to apply any time measure to it be- 
fore it is in the keeping, as it were, of some 
intermediate agency put under laws dis- 



Solids and Fluids. 61 

tinguishable from God Himself, although of 
His own will made, appointed and deter- 
mined. The tree has been growing in soil, 
air, moisture and sunshine, and the seed 
-came from its parent tree. So we may fol- 
low back through mediate causes as long as 
we please, and when we get to the end of 
all answerable questions we shall have failed 
to learn how long God took to make that 
tree, or what to include in that act less than 
the creating of all the world. 

Probably no man living knows what to in- 
clude in the making of the world. Let a 
young thinker try to think just what he will 
include in the making of the world, and if 
he thinks clearly and closely, as he should, 
he will find an honest answer in three short 
words, " I don't know." There are no time 
measures of any kind, either long or short, 
that can be applied to it as a work of time — 
a creation that was set in motion and started 
on the career of successive changes, within 
limitations, just as long as it shall endure, 
•or is to have any being, and still endowed 



62 Solids and Fluids. 

with elements that are indestructible. To 
say that it was made in millions of years,, 
and finished 6,000 years ago, cannot be true,, 
and is subject to the same denial that any 
other literal time statement would be. The 
world is not now what it was 6,000 years^ 
ago, or 6 days ago, strictly speaking. If we 
choose to fall back in the world's career by 
definite measures of 6,000 years at a time, 
we may repeat that time measure as long as 
we can count it, and then leave the question 
as far from answer as ever, and no man 
able to tell what he includes in the world's 
creation. Therefore, there is no scientific 
or provable time, known or unknown, 
when the work of the creation began, or 
when it was or will be finished. Any ex- 
pression more than the first verse of the 
Bible contains must of necessity be figura- 
tive. The Bible statement is positive and 
true : " In the beginning God created the 
heaven and the earth." That is literal. The 
institution of the Sabbath is also a literal 
and positive fact. Man is required to so- 






Solids and Fluids. (>o 

-observe time and labor that every seventh 
•day shall be Sabbath time. The Bible says 
nothing about the time taken for the crea- 
tion except in connection with the Sabbath 
day and to show that God made that distinc- 
tion in the use of the days, and made it 
honorable for man to observe it in all time 
by his own example, which was of necessity 
a figurative illustration. In no other way is 
the work of creation referred to as a labor 
finished, but to emphasize the rest time that 
God has made and keeps in reserve for His 
people. (Heb. 4 : 4-9.) " For He spake in a 
-certain place of the seventh day on this wise* 
And God did rest the seventh day from all 
His work." 'There remains therefore a rest 
-to the people of God." We conclude there- 
fore that all the truths intended to be taught 
from the first chapter of the Bible are plain 
so far as Theology and Religion are con- 
cerned. That the word "day" for man's 
use is literal, but not limited to a literal 
sense as applied to the Creator's acts in 
making the heaven and the earth : "In the 
day that the Lord God created them." 



64 Solids and Fluids. 

If we consider that it is the world itself, 
and mainly the solid part of it, that makes 
the days, the first day and all that have 
followed it, it will be obvious that days are 
used in a figurative sense when applied to 
anything that was previously made or done. 
The world makes days by its revolution 
on its axis successively every twenty-four 
hours, or it makes twenty-four hours in one 
day. But it did not make either days or 
hours before it had an existence or itself 
was made in the sense of being and moving 
in conformity to gravitation, momentum 
and other laws. It is inconceivable to us- 
how time was measured before there was 
any revolving world to measure it. All 
our time measures are known by the 
world's daily revolution on its axis, and we 
cannot say that the world revolved before it 
was made. Another step in our existence 
may take us another step in knowledge, but 
these are our limitations now as to the time 
of creation. 

The Bible does not speak of day until it 



Solids and Fluids. 65 

was visibly made by the revolution of the 
earth upon its axis: " God divided the light 
from the darkness," (for the first day and 
for all the days ever to be made by trie revo- 
lution of the earth on its axis ) " And God 
called the light day and the darkness He 
called night. And the evenirg and the 
morning were the first day." Gen. i : 4, 5. 
It is often said that the Bible was not 
given to teach science. But there is a science 
of Theology and Religion, and this the Bible 
teaches. Science is simply knowledge 
obtained by observations and experiments 
which may be repeated by others who are 
qualified to repeat the experiments and to 
make correctly the observations. All truths 
so obtained in regard to any subject consti- 
tute the science of that subject, as the 
science of Astronomy is what is known of 
astronomy by agreeing observations of 
many, and is correctly taught to others as 
the science of astronomy. The Bible teaches 
Theology and Religion, and it teaches that 
subject in a strictly scientific way. It 



66 Solids and Fluids. 

points to facts to be considered by the 
observations of competent men. It asserts the 
principles and characteristics of moral and 
spiritual character, and it points to ex- 
periments and works done to prove the 
truth of all its doctrines. Experiments un- 
derlie all its requirements. There is a con- 
stant call for men to exercise themselves in 
experimental proofs of all the doctrines the 
Bible sets before them as the pillars of 
truth. Its first words teach the true doc- 
trine of one God only, by pointing to the 
creation of the world and all things that are 
in it, and can be seen from it, so that noth- 
ing exists upon which any claims of another 
god can be placed. The great truth that one 
being made it all and all created things 
known to men settles the question by the 
exclusion of all other gods, and this is a 
scientific method, bringing before us a 
world which we are to examine for ourselves, 
simply noting that in its first appearance it 
was not more than thin nebula, " without 
form and void;" then the stages through 



Solids and Fluids. C>7 

which it passed iu preparation for the use of 
man, a work of intelligent design, variety 
and magnitude. This one truth of creation 
by one present Creator, the material world, 
as an example of His work, brought under 
our own observation as we now see it, to- 
gether with the views of what it has been in 
some other stages of its career, entitles the 
Bible to be a true text-book of the Theology 
and Religion to be taught to men. One 
God is the first doctrine of true theology, 
and the Bible teaches this doctrine without 
prejudice to the mode of His own being, or 
to the methods of His foreordained plan of 
human redemption by Christ, the Son of 
God and of man. 

Another true doctrine is the Divine ordi- 
nation of the Sabbath day, coming in at the 
close of the six days of labor and commend- 
ed by His own example as a rest day and a 
holy day, founded on the experimental 
testing of God for its right. Certainly 
such a method of teaching by example, 
founded on experimental proof before giving 



68 Solids and Fluids. 

to meu the precept, is truly scientific. If 
we take up any other doctrine of the Bible, 
we find that it presents to us, in the same 
reasonable way, proper grounds for our in- 
vestigation before acceptance. No book in 
the world calls us to closer observations, 
more careful experiments, or clearer illu- 
strations. " By their fruits ye shall know 
them." " Whatsoever a man soweth, that 
shall he reap." ''If any man will do His 
will he shall know of the doctrine whether 
it be of God> or whether I speak of myself." 
Nothing is more scientific than such experi- 
mental methods — practical tests of truth as 
these — the Divine works as an open book 
always before us, with its testimonies for our 
examination. And " Scripture given by in- 
spiration of God, is open for our inspection 
and information, as well as for reproof, for 
correction, for instruction in righteousness, 
that the man of God may be perfect, 
thoroughly furnished unto all good works." 
2 Tim. 3 : 16, 17. It is thus made plain that 
the purpose of revelation is to help us in 



Solids and Fluids. 69 

our observations and experiments, so that 
all who strive to find the truth may 
find it. In nature we find no power 
visible in itself, or life visible in itself. 
When power, force or life are manifested in 
matter they can be differentiated from it, 
from all visible things. Hence the out- 
going of our faith to the infinite Omni- 
present God is not unreasonable nor un- 
scientific. Invisibility is a necessity of Omni- 
presence ; hence the man of God in all ages, 
speaking to his Father in heaven, as a pres- 
ent person, can say w T ith reverence and a 
holy unction: 

"Whither shall I go from Thy spirit? 
Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence ? 
If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there. 
If I make my bed in hell, behold Thou art 
there. If I take the wings of the morning 
and dwell in the uttermost part of the sea, 
even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy 
right hand shall hold me. If I say surely 
the darkness shall cover me, even the night 
shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness 



70 Solids and Fluids. 

hideth not from Thee, but the night shineth 
as the day, the darkness and the light are 
both alike to Thee." (Ps. 139 : 7-12 ) 



"And God said, Let the earth bring- 
forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and 
the fruit tree yielding fruit after his 
kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the 
earth ; and it was so." 

—Genesis, 1:11. 



LIFE AND COUNTER LIFE. 

CHAPTER III. 

We have considered matter in its opposite 
states, seen and unseen, solids and fluids. 
We believe the unseen was the condition of 
all the materials of the world and of the 
universe : " In the beginning when God 
created the heaven and the earth ." Out of 
that condition the atoms required for solids 
were taken by a force that produced a gas- 
eous conflagration, and, of consequence, an 
overspreading cloud of smoke in all direc- 
tions around the formative globe-mass of co- 
hering matter. This darkness manifested 
the law of cohesion, and eventually there 
came into view the solid globe now under 
our feet. The aggregate of solids, as 
weighed in the world balances at that stage 
of creation, were, we presume, the same as 
now. 



74 Life and Counter Life. 

From that time the material world has 
consisted of these two parts in exactly op- 
posite conditions of matter, the unseen in- 
cluding all the fluids wherever they are, and 
the seen including all the solids wherever 
they are. We might pause here to look at 
the new made solids, wonderful in magni- 
tude and in workmanship, endless in vari- 
ety — the great floods of water, the high 
mountains and deep valleys, the rocks, 
metals, earths and formative solutions of 
mineral atoms in process of crystallization, 
crystals and gems— but our plan requires us 
to notice, in a general way, a phenomenon 
that occurred in time long before many of 
the minerals had their places and finish as 
we now see them. There was another out- 
come from the invisible part of the world 
before the manufacture of the most pictur- 
esque minerals was concluded. A new kind 
of force comes out of the unseen world be- 
fore us and makes itself known here in 
varied and wonderful kinds of conduct 
This new comer is called life. It emerged 



Life and Counter Life. 75 

from the unseen world in the quietest pos- 
sible manner. In its own nature an invisible 
force, it greatly surpasses all we had before 
seen or known in matter by its own peculiar 
way of using it. It makes atoms of matter 
visible to us in forms and ways not revealed 
in cohesion, or in any before known laws of 
matter — a new phenomenon, and we pause 
for a while to think of it. It shows itself 
in numberless and multiplying individual- 
ities, shaping for itself, in matter, the 
greatest variety of forms, sizes, habitats and 
combinations of parts and members, all 
made of the two conditions of matter we 
have been considering as seen and unseen 
— solids and fluids. 

Science says that all matter is either or- 
ganized or unorganized. Only life can organ- 
ize matter. Until life came there was no 
organized matter in the world, and there is 
none now but that which the individual 
lives here have organized for themselves. 
It follows that the organized matter is sim- 
ply the living bodies of all the distinct liv- 



76 Life and Counter Life. 

ing things there are in the world at any 
one time, including the full number of 
vegetables and animals. 

This new phenomenon of living workers 
over all the world organizing matter into 
material plants and animals comes to our 
view from the unseen, as all the solids came, 
and it shows to us another unfolded space 
in the plan of God in the creation of the 
world — another evolution. We see life as a 
predetermined, foreordained organizer of so 
much of the world's materials in fluids and 
solids as to lift them above the low level of 
inert matter. At this stage of world read- 
ing we see it as a habitation for an endless 
variety of lives of both animal and vegetable, 
and we pause to look at the situation given 
it to manifest itself in visible organisms, 
the place made ready for it, life's dwelling 
place in respect to the seen and unseen 
things, while it exercises itself in material 
bodies. It may be said to reside here. 

Broadly speaking : Just between these 
two parts of the world, the solids and fluids; 



Life and Counter Life, 77 

at the top of the solid globe, just on the 
shell of the world's core and at the bottom 
of its great ocean of fluid atmosphere 
that rises into heaven ; in this space in 
every direction all over the world ; at the 
top of this comparatively small globe of 
solids, with its crust but partially concealing 
many fiery billows below, as shown by 
structure, earthquakes and volcanoes, hot 
springs and geysers, with other evidences of 
enveloped heat ; at the bottom of an at- 
mosphere opening up above us for unknown 
miles through the blue sky into the infinite 
space beyond the stars in heaven ; in this 
lowly place, as it w r ere, the footstool of 
heaven ; at the bottom of all that is free in 
space in all directions, we see the place de- 
signed for the homes and the labors, the 
food and the enjoyments of all the living of 
every kind, with the camps and battlefields, 
the graves and monuments of all the dead of 
every kind. Here are all the throbbing 
pulses out of the living hearts of men with 
anxious desires, hopes and fears, wrestling 



78 Life and Counter Life. 

for changes, for higher stations, for better 
conditions of life. On this one stage of 
solids are the endless variety of persons and 
characters coming into view as persons and 
dropping out of view as persons, but sus- 
tained in numbers and variety — a moving 
panorama throughout all generations. True, 
some lives, just a few, are organized to soar 
upward at will high in the air, on wings, for 
a little while, and some to plunge at will 
deep below the billows of the sea on mere 
occasions, but none can stay long or very 
far from this common breathing place for 
all the living and resting place for all the 
dead — the place of contact between the seen 
and the unseen, the solids and the fluids of 
the mere dead matter of creation as we 
know it by our senses. 

But more than this : Physical life is 
never manifested, never organizes itself by 
use of atoms in either of these two states of 
matter alone. The two are always joined 
together in a wonderful manner before there 
is any phenomenon of life in any matter 



Life and Counter Life. 79 

whatever. The bodies of all life forms are 
solid, and the work of life in all its motions, 
whatever it does, is carried on in the use of 
fluid atoms. Every living thing keeps its 
own body alive only by its contributions to 
itself of fluid atoms, largely obtained at 
times by the conversion of solids into fluid 
atoms by digestion in its body, and when 
this process of fluid action ceases, for any 
reason whatever, physical life ceases in the 
organism with which it was identified. 
Hence we see the two states of matter are 
essential to life itself and are represented in 
all the tiniest as well as the largest of this 
world's living forms, in both the vegetable 
and animal kingdoms. 

The foods of every kind of organism'must 
include both kinds of matter. Every living 
organism must have some food in such form 
that it can work ^upon it and accomplish 
such conversion of it into fluid as its own 
needs require ; something solid, including 
liquids and solids, from which to extract its 
needed fluids. Also, the ejections, wastes 



80 Life and Counter Life. 

and exhalations of every life organism will 
be found to include matter in both the solid 
and fluid state. The odors of plants are fluids 
and their shed leaves are solids ; their roots 
draw fluid food from the surrounding soil, 
and their leaves take in fluids from the sur- 
rounding atmosphere. So every tree takes 
food from above as well as from below, and 
cannot dispense with either source of its 
supplies. Such is the relationship of every 
living thing to matter in its two states — 
fluids and solids, seen and unseen. 

We notice the order of the outcoming 
things from the unseen part of the world. 
Solids were the first thing we saw coming 
out from thence. They came out of the 
store-house of invisible things, which store- 
house our Father in heaven has not yet 
opened visibly to the eyes of men ; and now 
comes life, the second thing that has come 
forth from the same store-house of unseen 
things which are kept somewhere in our 
Heavenly Father's universal kingdom under 
his control and not yet made visible to men . 



Lift and Counter Life. 81 

We cannot think of life as coming from the 
solids ; it was not given with solids, did not 
come when they came. Its hiding place is 
in the fluids, and there is not a physical life 
in the world that can give up its fluids and 
not its place in matter at the same time. 
Life comes and goes in fluid matter, distinct 
as it is from it, for it has no material prop- 
erties. It brings nothing to the scales as a 
counterpoise to the small dust of the bal- 
ance. We do not imagine that a live ele- 
phant placed upon the scales and weighed 
should he be then and there electrocuted, or 
yield his life to an electric shock, would 
weigh either less or more because of that 
event. Ponderability is not a property of 
life, neither has life any part in the essential 
properties of matter as we know it. 

The true science of life comes only from 
the works of life itself. We must see what 
it does and define it by its works ; after that 
determine what its laws are, when we know 
sufficiently of its works to do so. This is all 
that science, simply as science, knows about 



82 Life and Counter Life. 

life ; it knows it by its works. We need not 
try to break the mystery of its being. We 
know it as a part of the wonderful works of 
God. We may classify it and study it boldly 
and carefully, but as there is always in it a 
kind of Godward mystery we should study 
it reverently, with open minds and truth- 
loving hearts. 

Probably the word life has a greater range 
of meanings than any other word. It be- 
longs individually to every organized form 
in the whole universe. The vivified speck 
of organized matter that, with flickering 
heart-beats, begins the battle of existence on 
wings and expires in the contest of one day, 
as the ephemera or May flies are said to do, 
is individualized life, and it ranges up 
through the whole scale of individual ex- 
istence. Life is thus used with a universal- 
ity not given to many, if to any other, words. 
There is nothing else more multitudinous 
than life organisms in the world. 

Because electricity is universally present 
and imponderable, and it is always found 



Life and Counter Life. 83 

abundantly in all organized beings, some 
have said that may be life. But if electricity 
were life it is very singular that an abund- 
ance of it is so fatal everywhere to all life, 
vegetable and animal. No, electricity is not 
life any more than heat or light or magne- 
tism is life. Life did not come into solids as 
electricity came, and it did not come until 
after electricity came. Electricity came 
with the first manifestation of solids, but 
life came in a characteristic manner that be- 
longs to itself alone. It came without visi- 
ble form, to build visible forms. It came 
without visible faculties to organize for itself 
visible faculties. It came with no visible 
will power and it crowned many things it 
organized with faculties for adequately show, 
ing the character of a free will. It came 
with no visible eyes to see its own work, but 
it included organs of sight in most of its ani- 
mal productions. It came with no visible re- 
lations to material things and it has filled the 
world with visible forms that are related to 
•one another and yet diversified in powers, 



8-± Life and Counter Life. 

characters and works and moral attributes 
revealed as subsisting with, and yet distinct 
from, the materials in which they reside. No 
building ever made a builder. No statuary 
ever made an artist. Life came as the world 
came, by the word of God. " God said." 
And that is the reason solids came with elec- 
tricity, and then life, not as the law of elec- 
tricity or any other law of matter. Life is 
an individualizing power and has character- 
istics that do not belong to any law of mat- 
ter. It has use for and ability to use matter, 
as no laws of matter can do without it. Life 
individualizes itself in fairly reasonable pro- 
portions in two opposite sexes, the male and 
the female. And the increase of numbers of 
individuals in all kinds of life, vegetable and 
animal, is dependent on a parentage that in- 
cludes both sexes. The foundations of reli- 
gious marriage were started prospectively in 
this world with the introduction of life. 
And the higher the life the more sacred and 
divine is that relationship of which Christ 
and His Church is the antitype. Eph. 5: 



Life and Counter Life. 8fr 

xxxii : "This is a great mystery, but I 
speak concerning Christ and the Church.' ' 

Again we notice that embodied life in both 
kingdoms and of all kinds, begins its mani- 
festation to us, its very first work, in start- 
ing for itself a body, beginning always with 
the making of a seed in the body of its own 
natural parent from which it is to descend. 
This special fact belongs in principle to all 
animated nature without exception, life from 
life. There has never been known in his- 
toric times any life without parentage, nat- 
ural descent or the body or seed of any life 
not commenced in a living relation to a par- 
ent of which it has a natural time limit of 
separation. Only life can generate life, and 
of all the kinds of life in the world no one 
can generate either a higher or lower kind 
than is natural to itself. Sparrows cannot 
generate eagles, nor eagles sparrows ; apples 
grapes, nor grapes apples. Though the seeds 
of a tree, vast in numbers, to be counted by 
thousands, it is still true that every one of 
them is a separate young life commenced in 



86 Life and Counter Life. 

the tree and shows the first steps taken in 
embryo to make another tree like the one 
from which the seed came. And so in all 
animals multiplying by whatever kind of 
€ gg s j or spawn, or dividings, and whatever 
their number from the same parent. The 
spawn eggs of some kinds of fish may be 
counted to a million, it is said, yet every one 
of them contains the embryo of another ani- 
mal in the likeness of its parent fish, as seeds 
do of new trees in the likeness of their par- 
ent tree. We notice, also, that the seeds of 
every tree and the eggs of all animals that 
are parted from their parent before an inde- 
pendent life is manifested have in a safe cas- 
ing or shell a little food for the young tree 
or the young animal to start with and to live 
upon for a little time whenever the little life 
germ shall be placed in circumstances to 
start independently, or on its own account. 
As an example we are all familiar with the 
food in a common hen's egg that lasts three 
weeks under the vivifying influences of incu- 
bation, in which time the embryo grows by 



Life and Counter Life. 87 

feeding on the repast of egg food stored up- 
for it for that occasion, as long as it lasts. 
Then the chick's growth and strength is such 
that with its little bill it breaks a hole in the 
shell which held his food for three weeks 
and was his own little world when he began 
life and was called an eg;g ; then master 
chick comes out to see the outside world and 
to gather food wherever he can find it, in a 
place where he can use his numerous facul- 
ties, eyes, ears, bill, legs, claws and wings, 
brains and intellectual faculties. If we turn 
now to the tiniest seed of grass, when it 
leaves the place of its paternity, it has a 
small well packed case of food in its tiny,, 
almost microscopic casing, for its first use 
whenever it shall be placed in circumstances 
for going on with its enterprise of making 
another blade of grass like that from which 
it came, including the production of seeds- 
and casting them forth with life properties 
and food in them like that with which it 
started its own career. Thus in endless mul- 
tiplications and successions all the orders of 



88 Life and Counter Life. 

life are going on to accomplish their work* 
We see their bodies, their growth and their 
work while they live. They die, and their 
bodies cease to be organized matter, they 
cannot be used as bodies for any other lives, 
even if used as shelter or food for them, for 
in this respect parasites must make their 
own bodies. That is a work the doing of 
which cannot be shirked or delegated to an- 
other, either bond or free, high or low, 
great or small, each life must grow its own 
body. 

Notice also that life always extends itself 
by individuals and in no other way. Mol- 
lusca may increase as the sands of the sea, 
and insects swarm as clouds, and fish may 
shoal in masses and grass may sward the 
lawn ; still a careful analysis will show that 
all these aggregated numbers of each kind are 
made up of individuals, and that each indi- 
vidual has only such a body as it has made 
for itself and such as form its seed or root 
multiplication; it could have made no other 
in substantial character. The egg is not like 



Life and Counter Life. 89 

the fish that spawned it, nor the seed like 
the tree that bore it or the root that 
branched it ; yet the law of descent will 
keep them both within their proper lines in 
all their future work. If we think of the 
unnumbered classes of life forms in the 
waters and the air and on the land, the 
preservation of classes is indeed most won- 
derful. But all seeds hold their secret un- 
seen of men, they hold the plan and char- 
acter of the material body from which they 
came, but will not reveal it until given an 
opportunity similar to that enjoyed by the 
parent tree. I may hold a mustard seed and 
a turnip seed in my hand and be unable to 
tell by sight the one from the other, but 
when placed in fertile soil, smiling sunshine 
and ample moisture they will open their re- 
spective plans with all the cautions of invis- 
ible growth; but eventually, faithful to their 
parentage, a true likeness of the plant that 
gave them respectively their being comes 
forth. 

The microscope has been called into ser- 



'90 Life and Counter Life. 

vice to discover the secrets of life in its 
starting, and all the responses it has ever 
given are in mere samples of life's very 
minute and early works. Students find a 
very small " cell " which is the first visible 
work of every life starting to form itself a 
body within that of its own parent, either 
animal or vegetable. The cell itself is not 
life, but the body of a life commenced upon 
the same plan as its parents' life was com- 
menced before it. The "cell" does not 
differ much in all the various kinds of life 
known, either animal or vegetable, great or 
small. The earnest student with his micro- 
scope sees the live cell, a very minute 
structure, but the beginning of a life has 
already passed and the microscope is con- 
fronted with just a sample of life's work, 
just a little cell with fluid centre rapidly 
forming and connecting other matter by 
cells and combinations, and growing apace 
until the time comes for a separate existence 
from its parent, or for some marked trans- 
formation. For example, among winged 



Life and Counter Life. 91 

insects that deposit their eggs where there 
is food for a worm, the life in the egg first 
deposited in the food begins and organizes 
a worm body that eats of that food and 
grows to maturity and then passes into the 
chrysalis state where the matter in its worm 
body is, some of it rejected and some of it 
used as food for the same life to organize 
and to mature a body of the insect kind 
which being completed with wings, the in- 
sect, it may be a butterfly, comes out in the 
real likeness of its own true parents, and 
ready in due time and in similar manner to 
deposit eggs for the starting of other ani- 
mals, but of its own kind only. All created 
lives have their own kind of transformations 
from embryo or germ to final maturity, but 
the metamorphoses of insects are so unique 
and visible as to be best known. We think 
of the butterfly going away with a bright 
new body and wings to fly in the air from 
its decayed chrj^salis, aud we wonder if it 
knows or remembers anything about its for- 
mer mode of life as a disgusting worm. Does 



92 Life cind Counter Life, 

it know how it once crawled as a worm and 
then slept as a chrysalis before it awoke in 
the air on wings with all its attractive adorn- 
ments of form and color and blithe motions ? 
These are simple hints of the transforma- 
tions, sleeps, torpors, and encasements 
which show that life is capable of a con- 
tinued existence in some organisms and in 
some circumstances that indicate a very 
limited degree of activity. It is said that 
life is action; but when we take two kernels 
of wheat from an old-time harvest and plant 
them, if one grows and the other does not, 
we say only one of those seeds was a live 
«eed. Still life, in its own nature as a sub- 
stantive existence, is something distinct 
from — I do not say separable from — all its 
changes and all its works, however wonder- 
ful they may be. We see it only while in 
some of its works and these show it to be a 
self-directing agent, bringing things seen 
out of the unseen, manifesting itself in 
either animal or vegetable forms and always 
after the type of its own kind ; never visible 



Lift and Counter Life. 93 

until it makes itself so by its own growth in 
its own natural organisms. All seeds have 
the stamp of their progenitors, so that every 
kind of life started in the world has a con- 
tinuous likeness to its original by natural 
parentage, however much it may be in- 
creased in numbers ; and though it does be- 
come modified in time by its historical con- 
ditions, climate, food, works and surround- 
ings yet the tendency of all lives under like 
•conditions is towards the likeness of the 
original from which they came ; organisms 
like organisms, and character like character. 
Natural parentage is more potent than 
" natural selection." 

Again there are many time periods of life 
which distinguish it from the laws of matter. 
Some lives mauifest their presence in matter 
for one day — ephemera — and some for 3,000 
years, (the cedars of Lebanon,) and this is a 
characteristic circumstance of life. Even 
disease germs, microbes, are estimated to 
have their respective periods of incubation, 
■upon the same principle of larger organisms. 



94 Life and Counter Life, 

Notice also that the laws of matter, cohe- 
sion, gravitation, electricity, heat, magnet- 
ism, chemical affinity, etc., all continue their 
force in organized matter the same as in 
unorganized ; and yet withal we see that 
there is no life in the world so humble and 
lowly. There is nothing known as a life 
that does not do works with the laws of 
matter, that these laws or forces cannot do 
without the life force. For example, an 
apple tree will cause to appear upon twigs 
from its branches 500 pounds of apples in 
five months, from May to October. With 
the law of gravitation for the whole time in 
persistent opposition to there being a single 
ounce of apples up there. We see the 
apples as solids, every atom in them is now 
obedient to the law of cohesion, and in some 
way has been taken by life from the law of 
repulsion and diffusion and prepared by 
growth to be presented visibly in fruit as we 
now see them. These are works of life so 
common that we scarcely stop to think of 
them; but they are enough to show that life- 



Life and Counter Life. 95 

Avorks, as works, are easily distinguishable 
from any and all the laws and works of 
physical forces . If anyone says the laws of 
capillary attraction fed the tree and the 
fruit, we have only to look at a tree without 
life and see if it feeds apples or anything 
else. 

We are all familiar with the process of 
grafting trees, and we know that whether 
the whole tree is grafted or only a part, the 
graft grows in wood fiber, looks and fruit 
of its own native kind. 

The graft produces its own proper kind of 
fruit, while the roots and body of the tree in 
which it is placed render all needed service 
in the fluid circulations required by the 
graft. The graft retains its own nature 
and does its own characteristic work in fruit 
bearing of its own kind. By this we see that 
the shoots, twigs and leaves of trees control 
their roots and bodies as to what their work 
shall be in fruit bearing, and the body and 
roots of the tree become simply contribu- 
tory. This is a pleasing result, when we see 



96 Life and Counter Life. 

a worthless tree made valuable by grafting- 
into it a little scion from a good tree ; and 
in like manner a worthless scion may be 
grafted into a good tree ; and grafting may 
accomplish conversion and re-conversion r 
but no third kind or new kind of fruit can 
be obtained by grafting, but rather one of 
the strongest evidences of the tendency of 
all life to be faithful to its ancestral type. 
Life is always dependent upon the co-opera- 
tion of all the laws of matter, notwithstand- 
ing its own higher character and power. 
Whenever any matter suited to any particu- 
lar life ceases agreeably to its own laws to 
serve reasonably well, life after a brief 
struggle gives up the contest, leaves its own 
organism and passes to some other state, 
condition or place. To our limited knowl- 
edge it disappears. Likewise its organism, 
its body, passes in due time to some other 
condition of matter. We can follow the de- 
composition of the organism, every atom of 
it, back to its former state of fluid and solid 
elements of matter. Obedient still to all. 



Life and Counter Life. 97 

those laws, but free now from the law of 
life. Probably if we could follow it we 
should find in like manner the reversion of 
vegetable life to its former normal condition 
in space, or that the life of the dying reverts 
again to a condition in space similar to what 
it had with its kind before it became con- 
stituted in matter by its own organization 
therein. Whenever matter is in a perfectly 
prepared condition to receive life there 
is always a kind of universal presence of it 
to start organisms, and we can see no reason 
why it should not come forth again and again 
in such kind of organisms as by the laws 
of its creation God has predetermined it. 
There is no spontaneous generation, 
but in the due order of nature there 
is always some kind of life present 
to all matter in a fit condition to receive it. 
A plant in dying retires from its own body 
and leaves it to the laboratory of nature to 
be chemically and mechanically prepared 
for reorganization, and this is constantly 
going on under our own observation. The 



98 Life and Counter Life. 

bones aud shells of many animals may con- 
tinue in some places undissolved ; but not 
in places where the air, heat, water and life 
are constantly acting upon them. This 
known reversion of the elements of matter, 
and the identical atoms of it, back and forth 
between the seen and unseen, or the solids 
and fluids, shows that life does not increase 
or diminish the quantity of matter existing. 
If life should organize all the matter of 
the world it would not add one atom to 
what is now existing. It would sim- 
ply change its form aud modify or re- 
refine its character. Neither does it seem 
likely that the lower grades of life, as 
plant life, for example, has not the same 
facility of reversion back and forth between 
matter in which it becomes organized and a 
place and state of existence in which it is not 
organized, as its own organism has of rever- 
sion of all its elements to their former state 
after life's departure from them. The ques- 
tion is whether life is not furnished to plant 
organisms in some way analogous to that in 



Life and Counter Life. 99 

which matter is furnished from its unseen 
atoms. As life is even more retired into the 
unseen, when out of its organisms, than 
fluid matter is when out of the same, why 
should not the former have a relative place 
of existence in the unseen fluids of the in- 
visible part of the world as well as the latter 
in the seen things of the world and without 
any necessity of being a material substance ? 
Why should not life be increased to the 
plant as it needs it, as well as invisible atoms 
as it needs them ? The plant increases by 
atoms of matter taken from the air every 
day. Why not the increase of its life in a 
similar manner ? I can see no reason for 
thinking that any of the lower kinds of life, 
either vegetable or animal, ever actually 
leave this world, if we understand the world 
to include the air space belonging to it. 
Life is never manifested but where fluids are 
in circulation in a visible organism, but its 
presence wherever matter is ready for organi- 
zation and a seed is rightly inserted seems to 
be as universal as the air itself. 



100 Life and Counter Life. 

I am the more explicit in this matter be- 
cause I do uot regard the highest order of 
life as included in this or iu any like rever- 
sions or system of renewals. Man's circuit 
includes his accountability to God in this 
life and that which is to come. Heb. 9: 
xxvii : " It is appointed unto man once to 
die, but after that the judgment. " Man, in 
the image of God, has a continued identity 
of person and character ; for him we find not 
only that " the body returns to dust as it was 
and the spirit to God who gave it," but that 
God will bring every work into judgment, 
whether it be good or evil." — Eccl. 12: vii 
and xiv. Science knows of no possible 
way iu which annihilation can take place in 
any atom of matter whatever. Changes of 
relative quantities and varieties of combina- 
tions, forms and changes of place, are all 
that matter or atoms of matter are capable of 
showing. And so of life in its lower orders. 
It may have changes of place and varied 
conditions of existence, with endless variety 
in forms ; and this, with its works, is all we 



Life and Counter* Life. 101 

Ituow of it. Its conception, and growth, and 
form, and work, and death we see, while all 
the rest of its circuit is hid from us, though 
not without a clear hint of its reversion into 
the fluid space from which it came. 

The question as to when life first appeared 
in our world is one of cousideiable interest, 
from a geological point of view, because the 
structure of the earth's crust shows so much 
work done by life organisms in produc- 
ing the solids as we now find them, that to 
fix the r^ate of rocks and conglomerate for- 
mations is to fix a date of life for the organ- 
isms in those formations. Fossil remains 
are found entombed in the rocks ; petri- 
fied remains are found in places eight 
miles below the earth's surface. These 
give us the certainty of teeming 
millions of plants and animals in each 
successive step of the world's career. 
From the view w T e have taken of the 
transformation of a part of the world's 
materials from a fluid into a solid 
state by compression and cohesion, which 



102 Life and Counter Life. 

made the earth for awhile a ball of 
fire with an outwardly overspread dark- 
ness of smoke, it is plain that life could 
not have been manifested in the first period 
of the world's cooling down process. Time 
enough must have elapsed for a portion of 
its vapor and smoke to have become lique- 
fied before a habitable place was ready for 
any kind of life, as we now see it. Even the 
aquatic plants and shell-forming animals 
required delay for the earth to cool down ; 
but the moment that took place we can im- 
agine the word to have gone forth and that 
self-multiplying organisms, life organisms, 
prevailed to the extent of the world's pre- 
paredness for their work. At the first there 
could have been no pure water and no pure 
air, agreeably to our present ideas. Purifi- 
cation required separations and rejections. 
Not until the chemical processes of nature 
nad ceased to be violent universally, and 
the extreme solids that could stand the high- 
est degrees of heat and the liquid solutions 
that would first condense were parting from 



Life and Counter Life. 103 

<each other, would there be auy place or any 
sustenance for life ; no conditions of matter 
in a state of readiness to receive it in the 
places where it now exists. Doubtless our 
Heavenly Father saw the world ready for 
life before He spoke the word that brought 
it here, and in just the kinds for its first in- 
troduction . Some kinds could endure a 
liigh degree of heat, some could exist in 
liquids but poorly aerified, all had a peculiar 
work to do in getting the world ready for 
the higher order of beings — workers whose 
bodies were to become so large a part of the 
crust and soils needed for future occupants. 
There was no reason why these should wait 
after the conditions of the temperature and 
sustenance admitted of their presence. The 
wonderful life organisms in the shape of 
mammoth plants and trees, gigantic animals, 
megatheriums and other monsters, as well as 
smaller crustaceans and polyps, an immense 
throng of countless varieties, all along the 
past ages are now presented in the crusts of 
the earth and described in our text books of 



104 Life and Counter Life. 

geology. We have fossil remains, both 
flora and fauna, in every strata of the earth's 
crust since the first, or certainly the second r 
showing that life had been in the world from 
the earliest time, and of such kinds as it 
could support in all its own changing condi- 
tions. The carbon and lime that existed in 
a gaseous state as fluids at first needed to be 
removed from the air, and life was made the 
appointed agency for removing it. Plants 
and animals made their own bodies mostly 
of these materials ; there was carbon enough 
for all the plants and lime enough for all 
the shells and bones and coral reefs. The 
lives that solidified all these immense quan- 
tities of carbon and lime have left their 
record in the rocks and chalk formations,, 
in the coal mines and coral reefs, witness- 
ing of what the humblest lives once did to> 
prepare the world for the needs of men/ 
Aquatic plants and mollusca and polyps may 
have filled many waters when but little soil 
or rock was dry — perhaps before the firma- 
ment was a visible reality and the waters 



Lift and Counter Life. 105 

"began to be purified in the way we now see 
it, in its circuits to the sky and through 
gravel beds of earth to fresh springs and 
fountains, a present delight to the children 
of men, a necessity to the present animal 
kingdom. 

We have seen before that all lives make 
their own bodies and begin the same invisi- 
bly in the living bodies from which they de- 
scend. We now observe, that all character- 
istics of every kind become known of what 
kind they are only as the life and growth of 
animals and plants reveal them. In the very 
lowest grades of vegetables and animals both 
are respectively so near alike that science 
has not determined the class of all of them 
whether animal or vegetable. A school of 
polyps building a coral island in a southern 
sea may strongly resemble a flower garden 
on the land. The protozoa, among which 
we find the sponge, are very closely allied to 
some vegetable forms, yet from thence in the 
upward scale, vegetable and animal begin to 
diverge and keep on diverging until their 



106 Life and Counter Life. 

contrasts become as immeasurable as their 
first characters were indistinguishable. 
There is no comparison between a blooming 
buttercup in the meadow and an elephant 
that tramps his foot upon it ; yet if we trace 
them back to the germs and microscopic 
embryo of their existence simply as germs 
we find them not much apart in their vital- 
ized atoms of matter. To us they start from 
an invisible line of separation as they take 
their respective departures out of the unseen 
fluid. The one, by the way predetermined 
by its vegetable parentage, to become a but- 
ter cup in the meadow and the other by the 
way of an animal parentage to become an 
elephant. 

One of the first things in which vege- 
tables and animals are seen to differ is in 
food taking for their own growth. Plants 
take in their food at innumerable pores in 
their roots and leaves and they do not show 
us any visible way in which they reject or 
eject any refuse matter. Very low animals, 
by a kind of muscular vibration, draw in their 



Life and Counter Life. 107 

food with more or less extraneous matter at 
one or more mouths about their bodies in 
various places, from which also they expel 
what is rejected and either internally or ex- 
ternally construct solids — bones, coral or 
shells. There is not much in a miscroscopic 
foraminifera to show the whole scale of the 
animal kingdom, neither is there much in a 
microscopic plant to show 7 the magnitude of 
the vegetable kingdom. So little does organ- 
ized matter in its first degree differ from the 
unorganized of similar kind that it is diffi- 
cult in some instances to tell whether certain 
matter is moved by life or only by electri- 
city, magnetism, heat or some other merely 
physical force. We have seen before that 
all seen things are made from unseen, and 
that all lives make their own bodies and 
forms and faculties in the use of invisible 
atoms of matter. We now notice that the up- 
ward grade of faculties and forms from one 
kind of life to another, in both kingdoms, is 
by steps that are invisibly small when singly 
examined, showing us again and again that 



108 Life and Counter Life. 

the seen is from the unseen. If we take a 
systematic botany and start on the ascending 
scale a tour through the vegetable kingdom 
we shall take 100,000 steps, more or less, be- 
fore we arrive at the highest specimen of 
vegetable life. Or if we choose to take a 
text book on Zoology and make the tour of 
the animal kingdom we shall have a larger 
number of steps, probably a million, if we be- 
gin with microcosms, before we reach the 
highest order of animals. But one thing we 
shall see long before we arrive at the super- 
lative of either of these two kinds of life, 
that the vegetable is for the use of the ani- 
mal kingdom. 

The lilies and all the vegetable adorn- 
ments of the world, the cedar and all the 
precious timber-making trees, the vine and 
all the fruit-bearing trees of the world, the 
golden harvests of grain and all food pro- 
ducts of the vegetable are for the use of a 
higher, that is, the animal kingdom — a feast 
of fat things and a necessity to their exist- 
ence. Yet the vegetable kingdom loses 



Life and Counter Life. 109 

nothing when it is used by animals for which 
it was made. A fair equivalent is made by 
animals in the cultivation of the soil — worms, 
ants, rodents numberless, and the whole 
animal kingdom give back what the vege- 
table needs more than it does its own fruit. 
There are also resemblances and contrasts of 
character all along the rising scale of both 
kingdoms. Good and evil are always near 
each other and in contradiction in all the 
places in the world wherever we take our 
observations. 

Another fact of life is its labor necessity 
and its wants. There is no physical life 
known to us that was ever intended to live 
without labor and food. Life comes into 
the world with abounding wants, and the 
higher the life the higher the wants. The 
tiniest foraminifer, with its microscopic 
shell, has its wants ; wants supplied, by 
which it has already made its own little 
house thus far, and wants continuing, by 
which it will enlarge its house a little and 
then multiply its own kind before it dies. Its 



110 Life and Counter Life, 

wants were only a little liquid, but that was 
so real that without it it could not have mul- 
tiplied its own kind or left, in dying, a beauti- 
ful microscopic shell as a sample of its skill to 
surprise and instruct the wisest of men for 
ages to come in the chalk beds of England. 
But as we turn with upward glances toward 
a higher and larger kind of aquatic animals 
wants are multiplied apace. It is not a mere 
drop of lime or saline water that a whale 
requires ; but, with his enormous mouth 
open, he must swim through whole schools 
of small aquatic animals and engulf them 
by myriads into his capacious chest and 
there digest them and transform them into 
flesh and oil and whalebone for the use of 
men. • 

And so there is an index finger in every 
life pointing to a transformation work to be 
done in the attainment of a useful end in 
the service of men. The earth itself were a 
useless thing by itself alone, with no end to 
serve, for all values are determined where 
transfers are made, and until life came into 



Life and Counter Life. Ill 

the world there was nothing to make matter 
valuable ; but life has use for it and need of 
it. So the only fair deduction is that God 
made the material world for the use of the 
living world, and hence that He purposed 
at the first what to have in his finished work 
at the last, and included all the requisite 
means for its accomplishment. The Divine 
object and plan of creation opens Godward 
plainer and brighter with each new day. 
The principle of contrasts is universal in 
matter and in life organized in matter. 
Solids are seen in contrast with fluids, or- 
ganized matter in contrast with unorgan- 
ized, friendly plants and friendly lives in 
contrast with unfriendly plants and animals, 
good trees in contrast with briars, weeds and 
thistles ; domestic animals in contrast with 
vipers and scorpions —animals not made 
for willing service of men, but to excite their 
watchfulness and defence against them. All 
over the world, up and down the walks of 
men, these contrasts are at hand striving for 
the mastery. Unfriendly lives are all fur- 



112 Life and Counter Life. 

nished, directly or indirectly, with offensive 
and defensive arms and supplies of energy 
for the conflict. It is not a true view of the 
plan of creation to imagine that conflicts 
among sentient beings were never intended. 
The true view is that conflicts are the sub- 
ject matter of a perfect law of righteousness, 
and when these occur where they ought not 
they are a sin against God and the forfeit of 
His blessing. But to imagine that a man is 
not to destroy the weeds in his garden, or the 
wild wolf at his hen roost, is a false view of 
the use we should make of means God has 
provided for our education, development 
and character, manliness and courage. Yea, 
even our Godliness requires this. We take 
no adequate measure of the usefulness of 
enemies until we see that no human char- 
acter was ever perfected without them ; the 
duties of life are modified by them, and 
moral government obtains its meaning from 
their existence ; they excite us to watchful- 
ness, and make us feel our need of Divine 
care and guidance. If our enemies are men, 



Life and Counter Life. 113 

and our obedience to God caii make them 
friends, wehave great joy in their recovery. 
If they are creatures of a lower order ot be- 
ings, injurious to men, they should be ex- 
pelled from human abodes, if need be, by 
the forfeit of their lives. The ravenous 
wolf has no place in the nursery with the 
Shepherd's tender children, neither with 
His precious lambs in the flock. 

Whoever is a friend to all the good beings 
there are in the world must needs be an en- 
emy to all the evil and prepared with the 
" whole armor of God to resist it." — Bph. 
vi : 13 . I deem it a false sentiment to think 
of the broad universal contrasts and con- 
flicts in this world as an oversight or an ac- 
cident under God, who is calling us up to 
Himself and away from these conflicts when 
our characters are perfected by giving our 
love and allegiance to our Heavenly Father 
above all else. "This is our victory that 
overcometh the world, even our faith in 
God."— I John, v : 4. 

Besides vegetable and auimal life there are 



114 Life and Counter Life. 

two other and higher kinds that have come 
into the world since the first two came, and 
they grade upward from animal life after 
the same manner that all life grades upward 
from unorganized matter. There are cer- 
tain possibilities in mineral matter when 
acted upon by electricity that give an ap- 
pearance of forms and motions made by 
life. They are forms scarcely distinguish- 
able from organized matter, although en- 
tirely destitute of any functional capacity 
whatever. From this low mineral base life 
begins and grades upward, while it spreads 
abroad in endless varieties, until the highest 
order of vegetable and animal life is 
reached ; then human life, coming next in 
order, grades upward as well. It differs in 
the lowest from the mere animal life in its 
combinations of intellectual and moral fac- 
ulties ; its self-government is expressed in 
laws that mere animal life cannot compre- 
hend — there is a moral meaning in the 
words " right and wrong *' which no mere 
animal can ever know. A horse may be 



Lift and Counter Life. 115 

taught to observe the landmarks of his 
owner's field, but not for the reason that the 
Eighth Commandment would be violated 
by pasturing upon another man's lot. Man 
is capable of a greater variety of studies, and 
of obtaining different and higher knowl- 
edge, than can be predicated of animals ; he 
is a more intelligent and comprehensive 
character ; he is capable of forming ideals 
of beauty and of improvement in character ; 
he is capable of feeling a difference between 
right and wrong, and of willing to do the 
right ; he is capable of rendering obedience 
to the laws that grade upward from the mate- 
rial and common things of this world to the 
highest spiritual and eternal verities of the 
Divine Father's revealed will. Man's life 
grades downward through all the laws of 
matter ; his very blood has atoms of iron in 
it ; his lungs require great volumes of air 
everyday, perhaps 20,000 gallons of air every 
day for mere breathing purposes ; a great 
user of matter is the physical man for his 
food and drink. And now, turning up- 



116 Life and Counter Life. 

ward, the next order of life above the human 
is the spiritual life. This differs from the 
human in its conscious relations to God in 
a higher degree than is common to human 
life ; the spiritual relations to God as a spirit 
are more distinctly realized and personally 
felt ; the spiritual life has knowledge in its 
own experience which did not come to it by 
the words of men or the persuasions of men 
alone, but by the realized presence of the 
Divine being and the assurance of a per- 
sonal responsibility to Him. Hence the 
spiritual is closer to God than the human 
life, or any former state of man's experience 
in his relations to God, so that sin appears 
more siuful and righteousness more blessed. 
The spiritual life desires the will of God to 
be done on earth as it is in heaven, and it 
rejoices in righteousness wherever it is found 
among men ; it includes greater faith in God 
and a more comprehensive righteousness in 
regard to both God and men. With such, 
and many more evidences of being born of 
God, man's life may rise upward to its 



Life and Counter Life. 117 

crowning height of a spiritual being, with 
spiritual faculties and sensibilities — a child 
of God and heir to eternal life. " Called, 
not to be conformed to this world, but to be 
transformed by the renewing of our minds, 
that we may prove what is that good and 
acceptable and perfect will of God," — Ro- 
mans xii : 2. The experience of this life in 
doing the will of God "is righteousness 
and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." The 
work to be done is the upbuilding of char- 
acter in the spiritual kingdom by the con- 
version of men to Christ. Our estimate of 
spiritual things is above all earthly values, 
so that, by contrast, the world is not re- 
gretted either as it passes away or remains 
with its disciplinary experiences in the 
school of Christ. There is, therefore, con- 
sistency in the plan that holds the body to 
earth tor a time but allows the mind, by 
faith and hope and love, to converse in 
heaven and to strive for a greater fitness to 
meet the glorified Lord and to see Him as 
He is — "the Son of God and the son of man,. 



118 Life and Counter Life. 

who came that we might have life, and that 
we might have it more abundantly." — 
John x : 10. 

We should not forget that all moral char- 
acter is formed on the human side and grows 
by free-will acts, by acts of choice at the 
time they were done. When moral evil is 
found it is seen as the result of a voluntary 
opposition to or a departure from the re- 
vealed will of God. In the lower kingdoms 
we find friends and enemies to men, in the 
world cf humanity we find friends and ene- 
mies to God. The unavoidable result of our 
personal freedom of moral action is that we 
must gravitate to one or the other of these 
two classes — friends or enemies to God. It 
is not an arbitrary arrangement, but uni- 
versally arrived at by free will from first to 
last — hence the necessity of growth and 
progress in a spiritual life, so as to pass be- 
yond the condition of conflict and to obtain 
unto righteousness, joy and peace in the 
Father's house in heaven. The " way, the 
truth and the life " is preached alike to all 



Life and Counter Life. 119 

men aud always on condition of a ruling 
faith in our Lord and Redeemer, who will 
save to the uttermost all who come unto 
God by Him " who died for us and rose 
again."— II Cor., v : 15. 



"For the commandment is a lamp, and 
the law is light." — Prov. 6:23. 



LAWS AND COUNTER LAWS. 

CHAPTER IV. 

In all scientific studies known phenom- 
ena must be referred to known laws, and 
newly discovered phenomena must be re- 
ported in some way as a farther revelation 
of laws, for in science there is nothing with- 
out law. Hence we speak of the law of 
gravitation, the law of the repulsion of 
atoms and the diffusion of the same ; the 
law of the cohesion of atoms, the law of 
chemical affinity, the law of definite pro- 
portions in chemical compounds ; the law 
of momentum, the law of the reflection of 
light and of the radiation of the same ; the 
law of combustion and of heat, electricity, 
galvanism, magnetism, polarization, crys- 
tallization ; the laws of colors and of the 
blending of colors ; and of numerous other 
laws known to science in the conduct of 



122 Laws and Counter Laws. 
matter and classified to facilitate farther 
studies of the same or like subjects. To 
know the laws of nature is to have the keys 
to all its treasures, the treasures of the 
world. The creation was by laws, and the 
whole world is held to them ; so that we 
can only know the world by its laws, and 
ourselves by the laws of our own existence. 
The doors to knowledge are hung on laws 
and opened and closed by them ; so, as fast 
as we know the laws of nature, they are for 
our use, security, enjoyment and well being; 
an inheritance for all the human race and 
for all time to come . So far as we have 
any means of knowing all laws are eternal, 
and more and more beneficent in proportion 
as they are respected and obeyed and their 
Author loved and glorified. 

We need clear views of what we under- 
stand by the word law, when we apply it 
to the conduct of unconscious matter. 
When we use the word in relation to men 
with intelligence, freedom of will and power 
to act as they will, we mean by Law some 



Laws and Counter Laics. 123 
definite rule or rules of conduct to be per- 
formed by subjects owing obedience to the 
government or ruler by whom they are 
governed, and by whom the law was de- 
creed and enjoined. The word implies a 
government with a constitution or system 
of rules for its subjects to obey. Five things 
are manifest. The government, the laws, 
the subjects, the obedience due and the 
manner of enforcing it with the rewards and 
penalties. 

So in like manner in the conduct of 
matter. Any rule to which it is always found 
to conform in all its changes of state and 
condition, just as if obligated to do so by 
some efficient cause governing it, is properly 
called a law. And there is no better word 
in science and none better understood, ex- 
cept as to the reason why matter does act 
so in conformity to rules. Why does every 
atom of matter and cluster of atoms, known 
to men, go and come always in all its 
changes in conformity to rules with a 
promptness and certainty that commands 



124 Laws and Counter Laics. 
our admiration and confidence in spite of 
all its wonderful mysteriousness to our com- 
prehension ? We see unconscious matter 
, obeying laws and revealing the same to us 
for our use and guidance. What a phenom- 
enon is this ! Where can we find the ade- 
quate cause for this conduct of unconscious 
matter ? We may listen for an answer from 
the earth, and many are seeking and wait- 
ing for an answer to come from matter it- 
self just where it is manifested. But we 
must not confound the phenomenon and its 
cause, or make them both one and indis- 
tinguishable. Of course we see the con- 
duct of matter in itself ; there is nowhere 
else to see it. But to say that unconscious 
matter acts in itself because it acts so of it- 
self is not scientific, and not as ingenuous 
as to confess ignorance. Better by far to 
refer it at once to the Infinite One above us, 
the Creator of all things, " in whom we live 
and move and have our being." 

Ivet us, therefore, answer reverently that 
all we know of the cause of conformitv to 



Laws and Counter Laws. 125 
laws as we see it in unconscious matter is 
that God has obviously made it so, and pre- 
determined all such matter to obey laws by 
a necessity of its own nature. This facility 
of matter to obey laws, this responsiveness 
to definite rules and the same atom of mat- 
ter so endowed as to obey a very great va- 
riety of laws, is of God; and is like all direct 
acts of Hi«, grand in its manifestations and 
comprehensiveness. We recognize its un- 
speakable value, cannot imagine how the 
world could abide for a moment without it, 
and still we feel that the way of it is incom- 
prehensible to our finite minds. 

Any act of God is all powerful within the 
limits He gave it to the end of time. So of 
this endowment of unconscious matterwith 
ability to conform to law ; its Author had a 
way by which He made it so to do. We do 
not know how He did it. We account for 
many things by referring them to the wills 
and ability of the actors ; but here in un- 
sconscious matter there is no will, and yet 



126 Laics and Counter Lavs. 

we see it fulfilling the requirements of law 

more strictly than subjects that have will. 

If we trace the evidences of free will from 
man downward all along down the 
lower grades of life to its vanishing 
point in unconscious matter, where 
no law can receive an obedience 
from any free will, instinct or tendency 
of freedom, we find in matter itself an ab- 
solute necessity of obedience to law pure 
and simple ; and that necessity of obedience 
not to one law alone, but to all the laws of 
matter as in turn it becomes qualified to 
serve one after another in all the pro- 
cesses and changes of nature. Is not 
this ot God ? And possibly no harder 
for Him than to make man with 
free will, and after that, by placing him 
under a necessity for some self government 
in the use of that gift and to show him. 
that he has it, to hold him as a subject of 
both necessity and free will, combined and 
harmonized in the highest perfection of 
faith. That is, the whole man and all hi& 



Lairs and Counter Laws. 127 
race as a true subject of all his laws and yet 
as his children of free will. The one need 
not surprise us more than the other. Both 
are unspeakably surprising and undeniably 
true. 

All the laws of nature are acts of God, and 
because they are His acts they continue for- 
ever without any possibility of pause or 
change, except in the will of the Creator. 
He alone can repeal what He, Himself, has 
decreed. When a rule is given by an act or 
word of His, all atoms of matter within the 
limits of that rule must be subject to His 
government and obey forever and every- 
where that rule, simply because the effi- 
ciency of an act of God has no limitations 
but in His own will. God said, " Let there 
be light," and that act of God was a law to 
all atoms of matter of every kind concerned 
in light being, to be subject to that rule for 
all time to come. 

All acts of God are eternal if He wills 
them so. Man throws a stone and, whether 
he wills it or not, it falls to the ground 



128 Laws and Counter Laics. 
within a limited time. God throws the 
whole world and it goes on its orbit to the 
end of time, because gravitation is an act of 
God. He turns the world on its axis aud it 
has never ceased to turn, for the obvious 
reason that He has not stopped it and there 
is no one else that can stop it. 

A law of nature is a strict rule of actiou, 
to which the same kind of matter, under 
the same circumstances, will always con- 
form. It is more than a tendency in matter 
so to act. We can and do trust our lives 
upon it and feel there is a certainty that it 
will do again and again just what it did be- 
fore, with all the conditions precisely the- 
same, and we dare not trust them for any- 
thing else, however much we may desire a 
deviation on special occasions. We see the 
laws through the extreme accuracy with 
which they are kept, and we ascribe them 
to God the same as we do the creation of 
the world itself; all these are His acts and 
the world creation includes them. Howbeit, 
the omnipresent God must be imminent in 



Laics and Counter Laics. 120 
all His laws atid yet distinct from them. 
u In Him we live and move and have our 
being," yet we are distinct from Him. 
"God is a Spirit." 

Our view of law relations to matter is 
that all things are at all times under all the 
laws of matter, and that any given atom, or 
mass of atoms, may at one time be more 
prominently and manifestly under one law, 
and at another time prominently under an- 
other law ; but that all things are law sub- 
jects and constantly within the scope of all 
the laws of matter and of nature, from which 
no atom ever has had, or ever can have, any 
freedom of nature to escape. All the laws 
of nature are constant and unchangeable, 
but all the matter in the world is inconstant 
and changeable, subject to new conditions, 
combinations and transformations and re- 
combinations. What may be the higher or 
manifest law to any given matter in one 
point of time may not be so in the next, for 
there is always a higher law present, when- 
ever there is any matter ready to re- 



130 Laws and Counter Laws. 
ceive it. Matter may change rapidly 
from one law to another, as it becomes 
fitted for such changes of manifestation, 
for it is a law of all the laws to take matter 
that is fitted to respond obediently in ser- 
vice to its rule and no other. The changes 
by which matter passes from one law to an- 
other must always take place in itself and 
not in the laws. All the mechanisms of 
nature, with all the forces of the same, are 
working on in their respective spheres in 
the preparation of matter, in the getting it 
ready to pass from one higher law to an- 
other in its rounds of services in nature. 

Fire, water, life, sunlight and darkness, 

« 

air aud chemical forces of endless variety 
and power, with electricty, are working in 
and with matter to get it in condition and 
ready to obey other higher laws, just as fast 
as its finished work, under present laws, 
will permit it so to do. 

In all these processes with matter we see 
the law of rejection, as well as the law of ac- 
ceptance, manifested all the way down to 



Laics and Counter Laics. 131 
the lowest conditions of matter ; only a 
part of any divided mass ever goes at once 
to the same law. Purification of matter im- 
plies dividing and separating the pure from 
the impure, yet neither part, in such a case, 
escapes in the least from law, for there is 
no atom of any kind of matter that does not 
reveal in itself the evidence of conformity 
to one or more laws. When we see a snow- 
flake we recognize at once five or more laws 
of matter revealed in it: ist.— Cohesion, or 
we could uot see it. 2nd. — Congelation, or 
it would be a liquid drop and not a snow- 
flake. 3rd. — Crystallization, or its charm- 
ing mathematical forms of angles would not 
appear. 4th. — The reflection of light, or its 
radiant beauty would be wanting. 5th. — 
Gravitation, or it would not descend. Grav- 
itation briugs it down. Heat melts it and 
turns it into water. More heat evaporates 
it into mist ; then still finer mist, even fluid, 
and now it obeys the law of repulsion and 
diffusion and so passes away in the opposite 
direction from what gravitation would take 



132 Laws and Counter Laws. 
it, aud of course by a law that is opposite to 
gravitation. Gravitation is seen in matter 
moving or tending to move toward the 
centre of the earth, and our snow-flake, 
aided by heat, is now free from that law, and 
having gone farther from mist to real fluid, 
and passing as fluid into the service of the 
law of repulsion, is now in millions of atoms, 
a numerous fleet, sailing upward through the 
air towards the firmament above,and the fact 
that we do not see it going up is our witness 
that it is free from cohesion in very deed, 
free from congelation, free from crystalliza- 
tion, free from reflecting light and free 
from gravitation— though it may soon Come 
again under these or some of these laws, 
unless it is caught in a fog, or joins its 
forces in some descending rain drops, or is 
drawn off into some work of vegetation, or is 
quaffed by some animal in breathing, or is 
yet driven of the winds on some long ex- 
cursion. No laws are more opposite than 
repulsion and cohesion, yet enormous quan- 
tities of matter are passing and re-passing 



Laice and Counter Laws. 13o 
every moment from one state to the other, 
not by their own conflicts alone ; heat and 
cold and life are very prominent agencies. 
All the forces of nature have their due part 
in all such changes. If the atoms in any 
solid form are to be made ready to serve re- 
pulsion they must be reduced by heat, or, 
in some way, be pulverized to an impalpable 
dust till its atoms are freed from cohesion. 
I repeat, matter is never taken by a law it 
is not fitted to manifest and serve. Its fit- 
ness of condition, its preparedness to obey, 
is the ground of its election to any new 
service or higher law. 

All matter goes at once from one law to 
another as fast as it is made ready so to do. 
What is trampled under foot of men to-day 
may in due time appear in the tints of a rose 
or in the happy, bright eyes of a young 
philosopher ; for there is in the world vast 
opportunities for fluid matter to keep up a 
circuit of changes ; that is to say, to new 
services under laws. There is no dignity in 
matter itself, except in the laws it reveals 



134 Laics and Counter Laics. 
and honors. Environments changes matter 
but not laws. We may take a diamond from 
a king's crown and place it in oxygen gas 
and touch it with a match and it will flame 
up at once and all will become carbonic 
acid gas, yet no law in the world has changed 
a particle. I take in my hand a lump of 
anthracite. Here are atoms of carbon man- 
ifestly subject to the law of cohesion in this 
lump of coal, and they obey the law of 
gravitation by falling from my hand down 
upon the fire on the grate, where, submit- 
ting to the law of combustion, they are ex- 
pelled by heat force up the chimney into the 
air and serve obediently under the law of re- 
pulsion of heat and cold and air currents un- 
til they arrive at a living tree, when the law 
of vegetable life gives to them a fit place in 
the leaves of the tree, to serve the laws of 
life and of cohesion and of color and of 
gravitation and of the winds that blow up- 
on it, first one way and then another, until 
a camel comes along and browses the leaf 
and it then submits to the law of mastica- 



Laws and Counter Laics. 135 
tion and digestion, the law of liquids and of 
veinous and arterial circulation, the law of 
assimilation and other laws of animal life, 
until the law of ejectments gets it in the 
breath or perspiration or some other of the 
animal's refuses, when it may pass under 
some chemical law of combination and so- 
lution to the root or leaves of a rose bush 
and serve the law of life then a while and 
finally appear in some beautiful tints of the 
full-blown rose, perhaps to be gathered and 
passed to the compounder of attar of roses, 
and then to become choice perfumery for 
some lady's toilet. All I wish or aim to say 
now is that material atoms are always sub- 
ject to any law they are prepared for, and 
they never do serve, or continue to serve, 
any law they are not prepared for and put 
in condition to serve and obey. The atoms 
of carbon in a lump of coal cannot be sub- 
ject to any law of life until they are set free 
from the law of cohesion. No law of life 
ever appropriates atoms finally until they 
are reduced to a fluid state. I do not say 



136 Laws and Counter Laws. 
that animal organisms are not provided 
with means of reducing solids to fluids, but 
we have before seen that all things that are 
made, or grow, are made in the use of atoms, 
pre- existing in a fluid state ; that the fluid 
state is maintained by the law of repulsion, 
and the solid state by the law of cohesion. 
Separate from these two laws, exactly oppo- 
site to each other, there is no life organism, 
and hence no law of life manifested to us 
where either of these laws are absent. 
There are swarms of life organisms so small 
as to be scarcely visible in their individual- 
ity, and not one of these could live in one 
state of matter alone. Fluid alone cannot 
constitute an organism, and a solid alone 
cannot nourish one and keep it alive. 

There runs through nature a co-operation 
of laws notwithstanding their opposites, 
and there is nothing known to us that does 
not manifest obedience to two or more laws 
of nature, however rapidly it may pass from 
one to another. The law of cohesion of 
matter is the most manifest in things visible 



Laws and Counter Laws. 137 
as they now are ; and the holding of atoms 
together makes it possible for them to obey 
the law of gravitation. The withdrawal of 
cohesion would leave the whole visible 
world, including our own bodies, to fall 
b>ack again into invisible atoms, "without 
form and void." All the variety and beauty 
there is in the world would vanish in a 
moment. There could be no such thing as 
form, or color, without cohesion. Light, it- 
self, can have no color until it touches some 
surface where cohesion exists. All this is 
but one thing in the value of one of the 
laws by which the Creator governs the ma- 
terial universe. We can think of laws 
separately, but it is vain to imagine that 
they have ever existed separately since 
the beginning of the creation. 

We notice that laws of nature are uniform 
wherever we may go. That is, anything 
that is subject to any given law is subject to 
the same law under the same conditions 
everywhere. A body that is subject to the 
law of gravitation on the land is subject to 



138 Laics and Counter Laics. 
the same law on the sea, and in the air, and 
to the farthest of globes yet seen by the 
telescope. There is not a new law or a dif- 
ferent law of gravitation in one place from 
another, but the law is one and always the 
same, under the same conditions of matter 
to obey it. And so of the law of repulsion 
and of cohesion. As far as any telescope can 
enable us to observe, there is the same law 
of repulsion that ministers to our world,, 
serving all worlds throughout the universe, 
and the same law of cohesion that makes 
the solids of our earth what they are — makes 
all existing solids wherever they are. It is 
not one law here that makes atoms free in 
space and another law at the stars, and it is 
not one law here that holds atoms together,, 
and makes solids capable of gravitation,, 
and another law at the moon that 
makes that capable of gravitation. And so 
of the laws of light, and of darkness, and 
of heat, and of cold. They have no local 
limitations as laws. They are not local to 
the world as laws, have no power in one 



Laws and Counter Laws. 139 
place that they have not in all places, under 
the same circumstances, with the same 
matter with which they have to do. Upon 
the retina of our eyes the light falls as 
readily from the distant Sirius as from the 
near Venus. To know the laws of light in 
one world is probably to know them in all 
worlds under like conditions. That the gov- 
ernment of all the material worlds, under the 
same Creator, are by the same laws we have 
no reason to doubt. 

Whatever is to be the subject of any given 
law, at any given place, must be made 
ready for it, be exactly conditioned and 
prepared for it. Every law of nature knows 
its own subjects on the instant. If the law 
of gravitation finds a boy on the limb of a 
tree too weak to hold him, it claims the 
right to take that boy a quick and direct 
passage towards the centre of the earth to the 
next station, and we have never felt any 
surprise that it does the same thing with an 
apple in the same circumstances, when its 
stem is insufficient to hold it. We see pre- 



140 Laivs and Counter Laws. 
cisely the same rule in all the other laws of 
nature ; none takes but that which is in con- 
dition to obey it. If sunlight finds a sensa- 
tive plate all ready for a photograph, the 
camera and plate all ready in their due 
places, and a boy presents his face in due 
manner, an outline of the boy's face will be 
made on the glass. Thus are the laws of 
nature for the use of men on condition of 
co-operation in preparing for them. Give 
the sunlight an opportunity and it will show 
its willingness to serve men. Prof. Henry 
remarked in his day — " A man might spend 
a lifetime in the study of one ray of light 
and do good service for men." 

If we look at laws in their contrasts, and 
classify them by contrasts, we can always 
put with any given law of nature another 
law that is exactly contrary to the first in all 
their manifestations in the material world. 
For example, take repulsion and cohesion. 
Cohesion holds atoms of matter together and 
keeps them solid, (its distinctive work is al- 
ways in that direction and no other,) while 



Laws and Counter Laws. 141 
repulsion drives atoms apart and keeps 
them fluid, (that is its distinctive work al- 
ways and everywhere.) 

And so of all other laws of matter. There 
are those, when considered alone, that tend 
to final results of extremest unlikeuess. At 
the exact point of starling, the two are to- 
gether, and the difference in work is least, if 
perceptible ; then moving from the neutral, 
their opposites become immeasurable. 
L,et cohesion begin to manifest itself in 
cooling steam, turning it into mist, a very 
thin fog, then a denser fog, and then into 
water, then ice and the hardest possible ice ; 
while in the opposite direction from the 
place of starting, the beginning of repulsion is 
seen in changing the fog to a lighter density 
and then to invisibility in the clear atmos- 
phere, higher and higher up, becoming more 
and more attenuated as the law works farther 
and farther away towards its own supremacy 
of power in the repulsion of atoms, far from 
one another in the thin ether beyond the 
skies. Such opposite works are common to 



142 Laics and Counter Latcs. 
all the laws of nature when considered in 
this way by their distinctive contrasts. No 
solid can be more solid than the law of 
cohesion prescribes, and no fluid can be 
more fluid than the law of repulsion pre- 
scribes. The solid rock may be an example 
on the one side of cohesion, and the lightest 
ether above the skies for the extreme repul- 
sion of atoms ; while between these opposite 
extremes of work, done conformably to the 
two opposite laws , all other matter in the 
world must be classified in respect to its 
hardness or fluidity b}^ degrees of subjection 
to either one or the other of these two laws. 
A solid may be so near fluid that we cannot 
place it, and a fluid may be so near solid 
that its true state is uncertain. 

Ivet us bear in mind that this difference is 
not because one has mineral atoms and the 
other has not, for both have that. And it is 
not because one law is stronger than the 
other, for both are infinite in the matter pre- 
pared for them. And it is not because they 
do not start out from one and the same 



Laics and Counter Laws. 143 
place, or from one common, invisible and 
neutral point, but it is because their out- 
going is in opposite directions. If we grade 
solids up towards the fluids, and fluids down 
towards the solids, we shall come to matter 
so neutral that science does not know which 
law it is obeying, and still we feel that no 
atom of matter can conform manifestly 
to these two opposite laws at one and the 
same time. Every atom of matter in the 
universe belongs, at each moment of time, 
to either a fluid or a solid state, and not to 
both at the same time. 

In some instances outgoing forces in mat- 
ter are simultaneous in opposite directions. 
They are ascribed to one law, and the op- 
posites in its action are said to be, the one 
positive and the other negative ; as when we 
say of the magnet — the end that attracts is 
positive, and the end that repels is negative. 
11 Like poles repel and unlike poles attract.' ' 
So of electricity — there are two kinds always 
present ; the one kind is said to be positive 
and the other negative, and all substances 



14-1 Laws and Counter Laws. 
manifesting electricity are said to be electro- 
positive or electro-negative, in relation to 
each other, according to the electricity they 
contain at the time of the experiment. Here, 
again, is the same law ; nnlike electricity 
attracts and like electricity repels. However 
this simultaneousness of opposite actions in 
the same manner is not commonly mani- 
fested precisely in that way, neither do we 
know positively that there are not as tnauy 
laws in electricity and magnetism as these 
contrary actions. The visible material in 
which they act is not altered. Commonly 
opposite laws in matter are known by ac- 
tions and changes that do alter its form and 
condition, and therefore cannot both be 
manifested as working supremely in a small 
particle of it at the same time and place, as 
magnetism and electricity do. We can find 
no magnet so small as not to have its two 
poles and two kinds of action. The mag- 
net's two states are always in its own little 
self, as well as in the two poles of the world. 
Heat and cold are not simultaneous and 



Laws and Counter Laws. 145 
co-preseut in the same sense and manlier. 
They do not touch each other everywhere in 
the same degree all the time in the same 
atoms of matter. They are not both in the 
one place at the same time in equal force. 
Heat and cold, as opposites to each other, 
are present in the same matter only in the 
relative degrees of force. The two are in a 
state of resistance everywhere, pushing each 
other as contending forces through all the 
seasons of the year, and in all the elements 
of nature. When we wish to help the cold 
in the pitcher of water on the table we 
douse a piece of ice into the water, and that 
reinforces the cold. Again, if we desire 
more warmth of air in our study, we increase 
the furnace fire and that reinforces the heat. 
Atoms in some way act in obedience to 
the law of heat, or the law of cold, so that 
only one shall occupy the same atom of 
matter supremely at the same time and 
place, though both forces are present in 
relative degrees. In this, as in all other 
contrasts, there is somewhere an initial 



146 Laws and Counter Laws. 
point, a neutrality from which both heat and 
cold started, and from which heat goes off 
in one direction and cold in the other, in 
exact conformity to all known laws in mat- 
ter to their extremest uulikeness. Heat 
reaches somewhere in one direction its 
highest degree of temperature iii matter, 
and cold in the opposite direction reaches 
somewhere its lowest degree of temperature 
in matter. And all the way between these 
extremes must be graded whatever else in 
the world is subject to heat or cold. 

See another example in light and dark- 
ness. They are in exact contrast. Their 
work goes out from one initial point, but in 
opposite directions. The supremacy of the 
one is a triumph over the other. They can- 
not both be supremely manifested in the 
same place at the same time, and there is 
somewhere the highest created light ; and, 
somewhere at the extreme opposite of this,, 
the deepest existing darkness ; and, there is 
always, somewhere, a seemingly neutral 
point, where we cannot tell which is for the 



Laws and Counter Laics, 147 
time prevailing over the other ; but when 
their extremes are reached we know that 
between the two all other degrees of light 
or darkness must be discovered. For we 
know that light, as a force in nature, tends 
to make things visible ; and darkness, its 
opposite force in nature, tends to make 
things invisible. 

There is no evidence that the law princi- 
ples that are always producing opposite re- 
sults in matter according to its preparedness 
for opposite laws. There is no evidence 
that this principle which extends all the 
way through the science of matter does not 
extend also beyond and above matter. We 
see in morals the same rule of opposites and 
contrasts. All unlikenesses have their ex- 
tremes apart, and their up and down grades 
to and from each other in morals in a man- 
ner similar to what we always see in matter. 

Truth and lying are exact opposites that 
run apart in works and character to the 
farthest extremes of conduct and character. 
Truth makes knowledge possible to us and 



148 Laics and Counter Laws. 
faith reasonable, while lying, the exact op- 
posite of truth, makes knowledge impossible 
to us and faith unreasonable. To believe 
known lies, if it were possible, would be sui- 
cide to reason and confusion to all our men- 
tal faculties. Lies are the negatives of truth, 
and need the negatives of our faith. To finite 
minds there is a neutral ground where a de- 
viation from the truth may be so slight and 
unintentional as to leave a doubt of its real 
place and character, but when the art and 
habit of lying has taken a moral agent down 
to the lowest depths of falsity, so that its op- 
posite to truth can go no farther, there is a 
long space between them filled all the way 
with agents ranged and graded as to degrees 
of truthfulness or untruthfulness as the op- 
posites recede from the neutral line at which 
both started. 

So of love and hate— they are exact oppo- 
sites in the hearts of men. Iyove makes 
mutual gladness possible for one and the same 
event for all who have the same love. Its- 
contrast is hate, which makes mutual glad- 



Laws and Counter Laws. 14J1 
ness impossible for one and the same event 
among those who hate one another. The 
tendencies of the two laws are to the ex- 
treme opposites of each other. Yet there is, 
to finite minds, a neutral ground somewhere, 
in which a person may not know to which 
of the two opposites he yields his own heart 
as a loyal subject ; yet no one can be on both 
sides at one and the same time. The Saviour 
seems to have used the word hate with this 
exactness to law when He used it to include 
whoever may be in nearest proximity to the 
law of love to Him, but not under it or obe- 
dient to it. Luke 14-26. Mat. 6-24. " No 
man can serve two masters ; for either he 
will hate the one and love the other, or else 
he will hold to the one and despise the other. 
Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." Love 
and hate are opposite laws going out in op- 
posite directions towards opposite ends 
from the one human heart and mind, and no 
person can follow both of these laws in re- 
spect to the same object at the same time. 
While this is self evident, it is not always 



150 Laics and Counter Laics. 
recognized by persons who do not feel any 
hatred toward the object considered, and 
probably will not until a trial or temptation 
is presented to the mind so as to move it to 
assert its real affection either for or against 
the object or person considered. 

If we examine other laws of the heart and 
mind in the same manner regarding their 
opposites, a uniformity of principle will ap- 
pear among them all. All have their oppo- 
sites. The law of faith has its opposite in 
unbelief — in no faith. No person can re- 
spond to both these laws in respect to the 
same object at the same time. The one law 
is fulfilled in the reliance of the mind upon 
propositions considered as true, and the 
other rejects the same propositions as false ; 
so that any person not conscious of either 
faith or unbelief, or of either accepting or 
rejecting as true any of the propositions con- 
sidered, may not know to which law he is re- 
sponding, until the temptation or trial of his 
faith is made, and whatever conduct follows 
the trial will show whether he is of faith or 



Laws and Counter Laws. 151 
of unbelief in respect to the proposition con- 
sidered. 

Faith is such an important law of our 
hearts and minds that it is always worth 
while to know exactly what we mean by the 
word, or what the law is we keep when we 
have faith. It has been said, and well said, 
that—" Faith is a dependence on the ve- 
racity of another." But what is it that the 
soul does to place itself in a state of depend- 
ence upon another? How can the soul 
know T it has faith ? What is faith to the be- 
liever himself? To this question we answer 
— Faith is an act of the whole mind as a unit. 
It is not an act of the will nor of the under- 
standing, nor an act of the judgment, nor of 
the affections, nor of the conscience, nor an 
act of the perceptive faculties, nor an act of 
the memory, nor an act of refined taste and 
sentiment ; but it is the agreement of the 
whole mind in the absolute veracity and 
trustworthiness of the author of its own con- 
victions. All the faculties of the mind have 
their preliminary work in leading up to this 



152 Laws and Counter Laws. 
supreme agreement of itself in all its acts of 
true faith. The will helps the mind to seek 
patiently for the truth ; it wills the mind to 
be impartial and thorough in obtaining tes- 
timony, and reason makes fair and true dis- 
crimination in the same. The judgment de- 
cides the weight of evidence, and faith comes 
from the agreement of all these. It is a 
simple and distinct act of the whole heart 
and mind, as one act by one mind reposing 
its trust upon some other mind or reality as 
true, and therefore of complete trustworthi- 
ness. The immediate object of faith before 
the mind is perfect truth, even when it is ap- 
prehended as a personal subject. If I be- 
lieve in God, it is because my whole soul re- 
poses upon Him as a true, personal and trust- 
worthy being. Let faith be an act of the 
whole mind and not a part of it ; and the 
immediate object of faith be truth, which 
may be in a person who has convinced us of 
his perfect veracity and trustworthiness, so 
that we can and do reply upon that veracity 
without fear of its failure. Nothing but a 



Laws and Counter Laics. 153 
false faith can come from efforts at willing 
the mind to believe evidences that are not 
clear and conclusive, and of force to carry 
conviction to the whole mind in its perfect 
and entire integrity. It is not reason to try 
and use our faith as we do our eyes to look 
where we please. Our faith should go with 
the truths proven to us and never from such 
truths and proofs. Religion is never honored 
by a chaffy faith that floats in "every 
wind of doctrine," nor by a medical pre- 
scription faith that is peddled about town 
for money and taken as a panacea for phys- 
ical diseases, nor by any wonders of faith 
that would see some mysterious relic of the 
past — the bones of reputed saints performing 
miracles. But actual, genuine faith, resting 
in the whole truth, has the support of all the 
intelligent faculties of our minds, acting in 
harmonious agreement. It leads the whole 
soul to all its truly hopeful efforts. When 
its object is our Divine Lord, it raises the 
human to the divine will, and establishes 
the fact of <( righteousness and peace and 



154 Laics and Counter Laics, 
joy in the Holy Ghost/ ' Without faith the 
mind is without an intelligent self-leader- 
ship, and can decide upon no reasonable 
plan of effort ; neither can it have any reason- 
able plan for any effort, to do it knows 
not and believes not what. Man was not 
made to project his way through this world 
without faith, and it does matter what men 
believe. " Buy the truth and sell it not." 
— Prov. 23-23. 

All the laws of nature are practically om- 
nipresent ; that is, we know of no place 
where they are not. If we take the law of 
gravitation and start out to find some place 
where it is not, our search will be in vain. 
There is no such place. The whole science 
of Astronomy is based on the universality of 
the law of gravitation. The planetary worlds 
and the sidereal heavens, all suns and moons 
and stars, wherever we see thetn in the uni- 
verse, give prompt and exact obedience to 
the law of gravitation. They are all subjects 
of that law. All eclipses of planets and stars 
are calculated and predicted for thousands 



Laws and Counter Laws. 155 
of years to come on that law. But gravita- 
tion is a dependent law, and never moves 
any matter that is not prepared for its hold 
upon it and kept in order so to continue. It 
never acts alone. The law of cohesion is 
always manifested in holding the atoms to- 
gether in solids for gravitation to take on 
their circuits through space. So these two 
laws are never manifested separately. 
Neither is any other law of nature manifest- 
ed alone. The presence of repulsion is im- 
plied wherever cohesion is seen, and cohesion, 
must hold together whatever gravitation is 
carrying along through space. So there are 
iuterdependencies of many kinds all 
through the laws of nature, and a fair 
deduction will concede the omnipres- 
ence of the whole system of the laws 
of nature, and of each one in particular. 
There is no place where the law is not, and 
its manifestations are to be expected where- 
ever there is any matter to receive it — made 
ready to receive it. 

The presence of a law and its mauifesta- 



15t> Laws and Counter Laws. 
lions are two distinct things, not to be con- 
founded. A law against stealing may ex- 
tend all the time over the whole State, but 
its presence is manifested when a thief is 
punished for his crime, in whatever part of 
the State he may have been caught^ for he 
could not steal in the State but where the 
law forbade it. And so the law of gravita- 
tion extends throughout the universe, and 
is manifested wherever there is any object 
•or matter made ready to receive it. Take 
matter prepared for it to any place in the 
universe, and you will find the law there as 
certainly as it is here, Whenever a new 
world is rightly conditioned in any part of 
space, for any given law of nature, as the 
law of gravitation, that law is present and 
takes its new burden upon just the same 
terms as all other previously made worlds 
liave been taken, and with infinitely exact 
adjustments. 

The laws of nature regarded as acts of God, 
permeating all space and all atoms of mat- 
ter throughout the universe, teach us that 



Laics and Counter Laws, 157 
our Heavenly Father's plaii for the conduct 
of this and all other worlds is a plan of gov- 
ernment by laws ; and we cannot find an 
atom of matter anywhere that is not under 
infinite and omnipresent laws, even in the 
conditions upon which atoms of matter pass 
from one law to another. 

In all departments of divine government 
whatever is prepared for a higher law has it. 
The most obvious thing in the material 
world is that matter always goes at once 
where it is made ready to go, and it goes 
there under the infinite force that enforces 
law. When you would fall a tree to the 
north you chop it on the north side, and 
when to the south on the south side, and 
the law of gravitation is present there, and 
the unseen in nature obeys it and brings 
down the tree on the side you prepared it to 
fall ; if to the north to the north it is, and 
if to the south to the south it falls. There 
is no fitful, uncertaiu, partial and unreliable 
law in all the divine system of laws revealed 



158 Laws and Counter Laws. 

to men. They perform what they promise 

without respect of persons. 

Yet, with all this, a special providence and 
answers to prayers are both reasonable and 
natural. Yea, more reasonable than they 
could be if we had found the laws of nature 
in material atoms variable, and given to ha- 
bitual discriminations. For now our prayer 
goes not to the laws, but to " our Father 
which art in Heaven," who made this world 
with all its faithful laws for our use and can 
make another if there is any need of it. We 
have these laws plus God, Himself ! One of 
the Divine methods of answering prayer is 
by a gracious work in our own hearts, by 
which we are fitted for a higher law of trust 
in Him, and thus made free from many 
anxieties about things beyond our control. 
Our faith and love cast out fear. We offer 
no dictation to Him, but try to render a 
prompt and faithful performance of what we 
believe to be our duties. God may influ- 
ence us or some other person and leave even 
an enemy disinclined to do us harm. This 



Laics and Counter Laics. 159 
we know, that the Creator and Author of 
such just laws must be able and willing to 
answer all filial prayer that goes up to Him 
in trust of His word and love, and from 
hearts hungering and thirsting to know and 
to do His own Holy Will. Let us offer all 
the prayers that are exactly in the line of 
obedience to God and good will to men : 
" To do good and to communicate, for with 
such sacrifices God is well pleased."— Heb. 
13-16. 

The world is always busy with the prayers 
of men from one to another ; and the idea 
that He, who made the world, cannot an- 
swer a reasonable prayer is inconsistent with 
perfection of character. 

There is a manifest law of prayer between 
God and men, and whenever we are con- 
ditioned and made entirely ready for any 
given prayer, it will be heard and answered 
as is best for us. " Prayer tests," proposed 
to the praying believers in God by people 
who do not pray themselves, if seriously at- 
tempted, would be profane. We do not owe 



160 Laics and Counter Laws. 
any experiments with God for the entertain- 
ment of unbelievers. Our religion should 
go more reverently to God, and our good 
will to men will be better shown by a man- 
lier dignity of character toward them, while 
we are walking humbly with God. All 
Christians have evidence of answers to their 
prayers, or they would still be without hope 
in Christ ; yet Christians are second to none 
in their belief of the universality and per- 
manency of all the Divine Laws. 

True science justly claims to be always in 
accord with all the laws of nature, but true 
religion claims much more— not only per- 
fect accord with all the laws of nature, but 
with all the laws of Divine revelation also. 
" To the law and the testimony, if they 
speak not according to this word, it is be- 
cause there is no light in them." — Is. 8-20. 

No finite mind may be able to tell pre- 
cisely what degree of moral freedom he en- 
joys, or what is possible to be done by his own 
self-agency. We all know, however, that the 
Divine government in both nature and reve- 



Laics and Counter Laics. 161 
latiou is calling all moral beings more and 
more earnestly to use their freedom in resist- 
ing evil and striving more earnestly for the 
attainment of the highest good. At every 
advanced step of knowledge new fields are 
opened, with fresh motives to righteousness 
and it rewards even in this life. But the 
strongest appeals are made finally to the 
freedom of individuals to accept the redemp- 
tion provided in Christ. Men are covenanted 
with as free persons, able to value and de- 
sire eternal life as an act of their own choice, 
and no provision is made for moving heav- 
enward unwillingly, no call for bond ser- 
vice. Christianity makes the redeemed the 
Friends of their Lord and the Children of 
God. It is freedom of will as well as right- 
eousness of life that grades believers up- 
ward towards the perfect will of God in 
Christ Jesus. Freedom and righteousness 
are inseparable at the throne of the universe 
in our Father's House. The opposite law is 
not only away from God, but it is bondage 
and sin, increasingly great on the down 



162 Laws and Counter Laws. 
grade. The contrast is unavoidable in the 
processes of law; progressive opposites are 
towards extreme opposites. The opposite to 
harmony, freedom and righteousness with 
God is bondage to sin, and somewhere be- 
tween these extremes, ranged along the op- 
posite ways, are all the self-acting moral 
agents in the world, either opposite to the 
love of God and receding from Him, or in 
the love of God and advancing toward Him. 
Whoever is self-preparing for lower law r s of 
morals and religion is moving toward sin 
and bondage in the chains of evil habits. 
And whoever is getting ready for higher 
laws by repentance, faith and love to God is 
moving towards freedom and righteousness 
and joy in the Holy Ghost, being more and 
more constrained by the love of God. 

Thus far are the calls and warnings that 
come from the laws of nature in material 
things. Science is based on their permanency, 
sees no way for their ending; hence they will 
never be changed, and whatever is moving 
at alHs moving towards one or the other 



Laics and Counter Laics. 163 
opposite extreme. The finalities of all 
things are in two opposites only, and be- 
tween them there is a great gulf fixed. Luke 
16-26. If man will rise higher than he now is, 
he must change and be changed so as to con- 
form to the higher laws to which he aspires, 
and to which God in Christ is calling him 
with loving entreaties. " Blessed are they 
which do hunger and thirst after righteous- 
ness, for they shall be filled." — Mat. 5-6. It 
belongs to the science of theology and relig- 
ion to place the subject of the higher laws — 
the Gospel Laws— before men, and to help 
them to the requisite knowledge of the way 
of salvation, the way of repentance toward 
God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Let 
men redeemed from sin by our Divine Re- 
deemer thenceforth move along on the up- 
ward grade of life's laws, by divine helping, 
up to the throne of the Father's House of 
Many Mansions.— John 14-2. 

One thing is plain, the upward way is not 
closed to any except those who will not pre- 
pare for it. Helping to keep the truth 



164 Laws and Counter Laivs. 
brighter in living examples is a work in 
which all the good in the world may be en- 
listed in Holy Enterprise. L,et simple, hon- 
est, universal truth be the rallying call to 
Christ who is "The way and the truth and 
the life."— John 146. And whoever 
reaches it first will be first in the glorious 
presence of the everlasting throne of God, 
being there by conformity to the truth of 
God in Christ Jesus, and led by the presence 
and power of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, 
in His mission of leading us into all truth. — 
John 16-13. 

There are all along the upward way of 
freedom, truth and righteousness agencies 
in the form of personal experiences, repent- 
ance and spiritual awakenings, as well as 
the example and fellowship of many in like 
relationship to Christ. They are all work- 
ing to assist and encourage every child of 
faith in God in preparing for higher 
laws, which are always present as 
fast as subjects are ready to obey them ; 
and to subjects thus moving upward all 



Laws and Counter Laics. If) 5 
knowledge, experience, joys and sorrows, 
all disappointments and trials, are favorable 
to them as members of the body of Christ. 
" All things work together for good to them 
that love God, to them who are the called 
according to his purpose," Rom. 8 28. Then 
said I, "Lo, I come, in the volume of the 
book it is written of me, I delight to do thy 
will, O my God ; yea, thy law is within my 
heart," Ps. 40 7, 8. "For Christ is the end 
of the law for righteousness to every one 
that believeth," Rom. 104. "Thanks be 
unto God for his unspeakable gift," 2nd Cor. 

9 15- * 

Let us all have "repentance toward God 
and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." — 
Acts 20 21. 



"And Adam called his wife's name 
Eve." —Genesis, 3:20. 



BIBLE OUTLINES. 

CHAPTER V. 

Bible outlines of the first man's life until he 
was married. 

If we could find a man who had never 
been a child, we might be able to imagine 
that the first man was never a child ; but our 
imaginings would all be wrong, and the 
Bible outlines decidedly against us. " The 
first man, Adam, was made a living soul ; 
the last Adam was made a quickening 
spirit." — I Cor. 15:45. 

Yet, the last Adam was a babe, born in a 
manger in Bethlehem of Judea. — Luke, 2:7. 

No living thing is known, or has ever been 
known, to come to the stature of a plant, or 
•of an animal, or of a man, without growth* 
To every living thing God made, He gave 
food and suitable conditions and opportu 



168 Growth and Education. 

nity for growing, and the making of each 
pair of all living things antedated their grow- 
ing. Hence, we are told that the " waters 
brought forth," and God said: "Let the 
earth bring forth the living creature after 
his kind, aud cattle and creeping thing and 
beasts of the earth after his kind, and it 
was so." — Gen. 1:24. 

Aud to prevent misinterpretation, and that 
no one should imagine that God made plants 
and trees, and fowls and beasts, all grown 
up, we are told, respecting them, that God 
made them " before they were in the earth 
and before they grew." — Gen. 2:4-5. 

And man was not an exception, but was 

made (male and female) antecedent to his 
growth, aud to his education, and to his re- 
ceiving the breath of God and becoming a 
"Living Soul."— Gen. 2:7. 

In point of time man was made after all 
other creatures of earth, and yet not so 
remote as to be furnished with food different 
from theirs, for either male or female. And 
God said : " Behold I have given you every- 



Growth and Education. 169 

herb beariug seed, which is upon the face of 
all the earth, and every tree, in the which is 
the fruit of a tree yielding seed, to you it 
shall be for meat ; and to every beast of the 
earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to 
every thing that creepeth upon the earth, 
wherein there is life, I have given every 
green herb for meat, and it was so." — Gen. 
i -.29-30. 

Plainly, therefore, man's food was earthly, 
and by growing on such food he was formed 
out of the earth, as all the animals are de- 
clared to have been. — Gen. 1-24 and 2*19, 
•'And out of the ground the Lord God 
formed every beast of the field and every 
fowl of the air, and brought them unto 
Adam (not before they were grown) to see 
what he would call them ; and whatsoever 
Adam called every living creature, that was 
the name thereof." — Gen. 2:19. 

Thus it is easy to see that any living body 
that is growing on earthly food is being 
formed out of the earth and out of the "dust 
of the earth." 



170 Growth and Education, 

But growing is always a process requiring 
time. Man (male and female) was not made 
and grown to childhood, and school days, 
and graduation, and capacity for law, and 
readiness for business and marriage, and the 
law of marriage all at once. And there is 
nothing of that kind implied in the out- 
lines of the first man's life. But the outline 
does show that the act of God, by which 
man was made a " living soul," was subse- 
quent to his creation. 

It seems to have been in the part of his 
life in which he was nearing to manhood. 
The act of God following it in the narrative 
was the planting of a garden eastward in 
Eden, where he put the mam whom he had 
formed. — Gen. 2:8. 

Thus far from the beginning of Genesis to 
the 1 6th verse of this 2nd chapter, we have 
the acts and words of God independent of 
any acts and words of man, even implied. 
3ut now and henceforth the acts and words 
of God and the acts and words of man, 
spoken or implied, are so intermingled as 



Settlement and Marriage. 171 
to require careful discrimiuation to see upou 
whom the responsibility of anything said or 
done rests. Also whenever in Genesis two 
acts of God are connected by the conjunc- 
tion "and," there is a time space allow- 
able of greater or less length ; often of very 
great length, so that it does not follow that 
God formed man of the dust of the ground 
"and" "breathed into his nostrils the 
breath of life, and man became a living 
soul ;" that this was all synchronized. The 
act of God that made man a " living soul " 
was subsequent to his creation as man. 
Gen. i : 27. In due time Adam had become 
master of a copious and versatile language 
and the time had come for him to assume 
all the responsibilities of manhood and of 
obedience to his Maker. He was placed in 
Eden in a home surpassing the goodness of 
any other retreat for beauty, comfort and 
abundance. God made ready for him to re- 
ceive the knowledge of "an helpmeet" 
which hitherto He had kept from him, ex- 
cept by promise; " I will make him an help- 



172 Settlement and Marriage. 
meet." 18 v. The female had been brought 
up separately from the male but not less 
liberally or suitably educated. Adam was 
qualified to give original and appropriate 
names to all animals and to other things as 
well, demonstrating the excellency of his 
natural and acquired abilities. And the 
female was not less of an exalted nature and 
accomplished for the very highest earthly 
companionship to which she had been ap- 
pointed of God, and was " made " manifest 
indue time and God " brought her to the 
man." Gen. 2 : 22. 

We must not forget or omit to see now 
and henceforth that the words and acts of 
man are so intermingled with the words and 
acts of God as to give a divided responsibility 
for the narrative before us considered as a 
whole. 

Adam's contribution must be carefully 
considered. Adam said, " This is now bone 
of my bone, and flesh of my flesh." This 
implies that he takes upon himself the 
responsibility or adoption of what immedi- 



Settlement and Marriage. 173 

ately precedes his own speech. We find 
good evidence that God did not bring the 
woman to Adam until he had provided 
suitably for them both in Eden, aud was 
ready to see them married and to bestow His 
blessing. Adam had desired a helpmeet. 
Aud if we suppose the exuberance of the 
human imagination in its pristine state and 
in the joy of receiving "an helpmeet." 

So unexpectedly and suddenly and of such 
surpassing fitness to himself could enable 
him to account for the Lord's bringing a 
mate to him by the way of such a unique 
process of manufacture more readily than 
by any other way. Then this hard part of 
the narrative, this metaphor, this rib story, 
is all accounted for, and Adam is responsible 
for sending down to us this enigmatical 
account of the origin of woman. Perhaps he 
did not imagine it would ever be interpret- 
ed literally. No Bible writer ever recog- 
nized it. Our Saviour wholly disregarded 
it, aud referred directly to the identical 
persons, male and female, that God first 



174: Law of Marriage. 

made as the actual couple that are now 
united in marriage. If there was any 
mystery, he has brushed it aside and 
made the occasion of that first marriage 
God's time of giving to man the true law of 
marriage for all men and for all time. "And 
He answered and said unto them, * Have ye 
not read that He which made them at the 
beginning made them male and female. 
And said, for this cause shall a man leave 
father and mother and shall cleave to his 
wife : and they twain shall be one flesh ! 
Wherefore they are no more twain but one 
flesh. What therefore God hath joined to- 
gether let not man put asunder.' " Matt. 
19 : 4-6. 



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